Sunday, January 31, 2016
JUST CHANGING A LIGHT BULB
(Sorry, but the right part of the screen is cut off. To view the full screen, click on The Unconventional Gazette link below the photo of BarkGrpwlBite.)
You couldn't get me to do this if you paid me a million bucks per hour.
You couldn't get me to do this if you paid me a million bucks per hour.
AMAZING MIND READER
(Sorry, but the right part of the screen is cut off. To view the full screen, click on The Unconventional Gazette link below the photo of BarkGrpwlBite.)
I'll be damned if I can figure out how he does this. I did it three different ways and each time he 'read my mind.'
I'll be damned if I can figure out how he does this. I did it three different ways and each time he 'read my mind.'
DO NOT PLACE YOUR COFFEE ON TOP OF YOUR CAR OR YOUR AR-15 ON TOP OF THE CAR’S TRUNK LID
A California sheriff’s deputy is minus an AR-15 because he drove off with the gun lying on top of his patrol car’s trunk lid
People are always driving off with a cup of coffee sitting on top of the car’s roof. Worse yet, sometimes they drive off with their brief case or the day’s cash receipts sitting on to pf the car. And even worse than that, how about leaving an AR-15 sitting on top of the car’s trunk lid?
That’s exactly what an unnamed Orange County (California) sheriff’s deputy did Tuesday. The deputy walked out of the Southwest Operations Division's Aliso Viejo station around 7 p.m. to begin his patrol shift. He placed an AR-15 on top of the patrol car’s trunk lid. He either got distracted, or his mind wandered, because he got in the car and drove off without securing the gun inside the patrol car. Around 3:15 a.m. Wednesday, he discovered the rifle was gone.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
A search for the missing rifle was launched immediately.
"Numerous resources including reserve deputies, bloodhounds and investigative personnel immediately began a search of the area in and around the station as well as retracing the streets he drove on," the sheriff's department said in a prepared release.
The search for the rifle continues, and the sheriff's department appealed to the public Wednesday for help in locating the weapon.
I’ll bet that deputy is not only deeply embarrassed, but he’s also in deep shit. I’m sure he’s facing a couple or more days off without pay. And if the rifle is not recovered real soon, its cost will be deducted from the poor schmuck’s paycheck.
People are always driving off with a cup of coffee sitting on top of the car’s roof. Worse yet, sometimes they drive off with their brief case or the day’s cash receipts sitting on to pf the car. And even worse than that, how about leaving an AR-15 sitting on top of the car’s trunk lid?
That’s exactly what an unnamed Orange County (California) sheriff’s deputy did Tuesday. The deputy walked out of the Southwest Operations Division's Aliso Viejo station around 7 p.m. to begin his patrol shift. He placed an AR-15 on top of the patrol car’s trunk lid. He either got distracted, or his mind wandered, because he got in the car and drove off without securing the gun inside the patrol car. Around 3:15 a.m. Wednesday, he discovered the rifle was gone.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
A search for the missing rifle was launched immediately.
"Numerous resources including reserve deputies, bloodhounds and investigative personnel immediately began a search of the area in and around the station as well as retracing the streets he drove on," the sheriff's department said in a prepared release.
The search for the rifle continues, and the sheriff's department appealed to the public Wednesday for help in locating the weapon.
I’ll bet that deputy is not only deeply embarrassed, but he’s also in deep shit. I’m sure he’s facing a couple or more days off without pay. And if the rifle is not recovered real soon, its cost will be deducted from the poor schmuck’s paycheck.
LEAVE YOUR WIFE’S CELLPHONE ALONE
By Bob Walsh
The Second District Court of Appeals in L A just upheld a very interesting robbery conviction. Jose Aguilera had snatched his wife’s cellphone. He asserted that his possession of it was only brief and temporary and pointed out that the cellphone was community property that he had in fact paid for. The D A insisted that taking of property from the person of another by force or fear is in fact robbery in CA. Aguilera was convicted, and just lost the appeal.
The two had been at a party in 2014 and the wife wanted to leave. She went to the car and locked herself in. He smashed a window and tried to pull her out of the car until he was restrained by other partygoers. He did manage to snag her cellphone. He had priors for thumping on his wife and got one year county time for his transgression, which probably translated as about four days in actual custody.
The Second District Court of Appeals in L A just upheld a very interesting robbery conviction. Jose Aguilera had snatched his wife’s cellphone. He asserted that his possession of it was only brief and temporary and pointed out that the cellphone was community property that he had in fact paid for. The D A insisted that taking of property from the person of another by force or fear is in fact robbery in CA. Aguilera was convicted, and just lost the appeal.
The two had been at a party in 2014 and the wife wanted to leave. She went to the car and locked herself in. He smashed a window and tried to pull her out of the car until he was restrained by other partygoers. He did manage to snag her cellphone. He had priors for thumping on his wife and got one year county time for his transgression, which probably translated as about four days in actual custody.
FLORIDA DEPUTY ARRESTED IN TRAFFIC STOP SHOOTING
“Sometimes, even good people do things wrong. When we do things wrong we have to accept responsibility.”
Tampa Tribune
January 29, 2016
MADIERA BEACH, Florida -- A Pinellas County deputy was arrested Friday on a charge of attempted manslaughter in connection with a December traffic stop in which he shot and wounded a handcuffed, unarmed man.
Deputy Timothy Virden was arrested Friday after it was determined he fabricated a story of the man attempting to grab the deputy’s gun during a struggle.
“The shooting was not justified under law or agency policy,” said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who added that investigations into the incident showed evidence did not support Virden’s story.
The man who was shot, 26-year-old Dylon Tompkin-Holmes, was struck twice while he was unarmed and handcuffed behind his back, Gualtieri said a news conference Friday.
Tompkins-Holmes was not a threat and “offered no active resistance, and never touched the deputy’s gun,” Gualtieri said.
Gualtieri said Virden has been fired.
“I believe that Tim Verden is a good man and a deputy who dedicated his professional life to law enforcement, and by all accounts up to this point had an excellent performance record,” the sheriff said. “However, sometimes, even good people do things wrong. When we do things wrong we have to accept responibility.”
The incident occurred after Virden stopped a woman at 3:05 a.m. Dec. 30 in Madiera Beach on suspicion of DUI. Tompkins-Holmes, a passenger, was detained after he became angry and attempted to interfere in a sobriety test, the sheriff’s office said at the time.
At the time, the sheriff’s office said Tompkins-Holmes attempted to grab the gun, but Virden secured the gun and fired.
Virden was booked at the county jail Friday morning and released on bond.
Tampa Tribune
January 29, 2016
MADIERA BEACH, Florida -- A Pinellas County deputy was arrested Friday on a charge of attempted manslaughter in connection with a December traffic stop in which he shot and wounded a handcuffed, unarmed man.
Deputy Timothy Virden was arrested Friday after it was determined he fabricated a story of the man attempting to grab the deputy’s gun during a struggle.
“The shooting was not justified under law or agency policy,” said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who added that investigations into the incident showed evidence did not support Virden’s story.
The man who was shot, 26-year-old Dylon Tompkin-Holmes, was struck twice while he was unarmed and handcuffed behind his back, Gualtieri said a news conference Friday.
Tompkins-Holmes was not a threat and “offered no active resistance, and never touched the deputy’s gun,” Gualtieri said.
Gualtieri said Virden has been fired.
“I believe that Tim Verden is a good man and a deputy who dedicated his professional life to law enforcement, and by all accounts up to this point had an excellent performance record,” the sheriff said. “However, sometimes, even good people do things wrong. When we do things wrong we have to accept responibility.”
The incident occurred after Virden stopped a woman at 3:05 a.m. Dec. 30 in Madiera Beach on suspicion of DUI. Tompkins-Holmes, a passenger, was detained after he became angry and attempted to interfere in a sobriety test, the sheriff’s office said at the time.
At the time, the sheriff’s office said Tompkins-Holmes attempted to grab the gun, but Virden secured the gun and fired.
Virden was booked at the county jail Friday morning and released on bond.
BURGLARS ESCAPE FROM COPS IN PICKUP TRUCK DRAGGING AN ATM FROM A STRIP CLUB THAT DOUBLES AS A CHURCH
The Canadian cops apparently cut off the chase when the ATM broke free from the chain used to drag it away
By Allison Elkin
VICE News
January 27, 2016
In a scenario that sounds like it came right out of a Trailer Park Boys episode (because it did), three suspects used a pickup truck to ram through the the doors of a strip club that doubles as a church in Guelph, Ontario—called the Manor—in a failed attempt to steal an ATM. When cops arrived after being called just before 7 AM today, they witnessed the truck pulling the ATM by a chain on the snow-covered ground down a street beside the club.
Sam Cohen, the general manager of the Manor, told VICE that the incompetent thieves did approximately $100,000 in damage.
"It didn't go their way, they spent all that time planning and trying to get it out, it took them ten times longer than they probably thought it would," Cohen said. "They pull out the chain, and they're literally dragging [the ATM] like a sled down the street... in the end, they have to pull away so fast that they lose the ATM."
Cohen described what he saw on the club's surveillance tape, which has now been handed over to police for the investigation.
"There were men entering the club through one door, they scope out the ATM, they come through the front door, they wrap the ATM with some chain," he said. "It took them a while to get it out because they were having some difficulty." Then, he said, the ATM fell down some stairs, and they had to chain it back up. They then proceeded to attach the chain to the end of the truck through the front door, and "ripped it through the wall."
The Manor is a fixture in the community. It was the previous home of Canadian beer mogul George Sleeman, the family who owns it was the subject of a 2013 feature-length, award-winning documentary, The Manor.
Though the would-be thieves chose a strange time to try to steal the ATM—in the early morning on a weekday—Cohen suspects it's because they probably assumed most people in the building were asleep at that time (the building also serves as a residence). He said that a cleaner became aware of the situation and that some of their tenants who live across the street also saw the truck and called police.
Cops followed the truck for several blocks, at which point the ATM broke loose and the thieves were forced to make the decision to leave it behind and pull away. The truck, a dark-colored, four-door Ford F-150, was last seen heading toward Cambridge, Ontario. There is no description of suspects available at this time.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m at a loss for words as to why the cops did not continue to chase the burglars after the ATM fell free. To me, that’s gross incompetence.
A church that doubles as a strip club? Now that’s a neat church. I’ll bet it gets a lot of converts … male converts that is.
I can just see the preacher finishing his sermon, “The Wages of Sin is Death,” by announcing, “Amen … OK, the bar is now open, come on down girls.”
By Allison Elkin
VICE News
January 27, 2016
In a scenario that sounds like it came right out of a Trailer Park Boys episode (because it did), three suspects used a pickup truck to ram through the the doors of a strip club that doubles as a church in Guelph, Ontario—called the Manor—in a failed attempt to steal an ATM. When cops arrived after being called just before 7 AM today, they witnessed the truck pulling the ATM by a chain on the snow-covered ground down a street beside the club.
Sam Cohen, the general manager of the Manor, told VICE that the incompetent thieves did approximately $100,000 in damage.
"It didn't go their way, they spent all that time planning and trying to get it out, it took them ten times longer than they probably thought it would," Cohen said. "They pull out the chain, and they're literally dragging [the ATM] like a sled down the street... in the end, they have to pull away so fast that they lose the ATM."
Cohen described what he saw on the club's surveillance tape, which has now been handed over to police for the investigation.
"There were men entering the club through one door, they scope out the ATM, they come through the front door, they wrap the ATM with some chain," he said. "It took them a while to get it out because they were having some difficulty." Then, he said, the ATM fell down some stairs, and they had to chain it back up. They then proceeded to attach the chain to the end of the truck through the front door, and "ripped it through the wall."
The Manor is a fixture in the community. It was the previous home of Canadian beer mogul George Sleeman, the family who owns it was the subject of a 2013 feature-length, award-winning documentary, The Manor.
Though the would-be thieves chose a strange time to try to steal the ATM—in the early morning on a weekday—Cohen suspects it's because they probably assumed most people in the building were asleep at that time (the building also serves as a residence). He said that a cleaner became aware of the situation and that some of their tenants who live across the street also saw the truck and called police.
Cops followed the truck for several blocks, at which point the ATM broke loose and the thieves were forced to make the decision to leave it behind and pull away. The truck, a dark-colored, four-door Ford F-150, was last seen heading toward Cambridge, Ontario. There is no description of suspects available at this time.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m at a loss for words as to why the cops did not continue to chase the burglars after the ATM fell free. To me, that’s gross incompetence.
A church that doubles as a strip club? Now that’s a neat church. I’ll bet it gets a lot of converts … male converts that is.
I can just see the preacher finishing his sermon, “The Wages of Sin is Death,” by announcing, “Amen … OK, the bar is now open, come on down girls.”
Saturday, January 30, 2016
ONE TRULY PROUD GRANDFATHER
Yesterday was one of the proudest days of my long life. My youngest granddaughter officially became a police officer.
Getting to pin her badge on that young lady during the police academy graduation ceremony was a great honor for me.
Best of all is that my granddaughter is now an officer with a Dallas-Fort Worth area police department, one that is considered among the very best in the Great State of Texas. That police agency requires that all applicants must have a four-year college degree. The academy’s basic training course lasted six months and far exceeded the requirements of the Texas law enforcement licensing commission.
Now you can see why yesterday was one of the proudest days of my long life.
Getting to pin her badge on that young lady during the police academy graduation ceremony was a great honor for me.
Best of all is that my granddaughter is now an officer with a Dallas-Fort Worth area police department, one that is considered among the very best in the Great State of Texas. That police agency requires that all applicants must have a four-year college degree. The academy’s basic training course lasted six months and far exceeded the requirements of the Texas law enforcement licensing commission.
Now you can see why yesterday was one of the proudest days of my long life.
THE ‘DANGER’ OF PATROLLING NYC PROJECTS WAS USED BY THE DEFENSE AT A COP SHOOTING TRIAL
By John Surico
Vice News
January 27, 2016
On Tuesday afternoon in Brooklyn Supreme Court, defense attorney Robert Brown asked New York City Police Officer Andrae Fernandez when public housing cops are supposed to unholster their guns.
Fernandez paused, looking confused. "Can you rephrase, please?" he asked. The attorney retraced his steps, asking instead how many times Fernandez has pulled out his own gun in eight years on the force. Again Fernandez hesitated, visibly pondering the query. "Hundreds of times?" Brown suggested, breaking the silence.
"That's fair to say, yes," the officer responded.
The answer was exactly what the lawyer was looking for. It suggests armed caution is only natural for a public housing officer, like Fernandez, who polices in New York City's most dangerous neighborhoods. The grim contention comprised the meat of the defense on day two of the Akai Gurley trial, in which Officer Peter Liang is being tried for the accidental—but fatal—shooting of Gurley, a 28-year-old unarmed black man, in the decrepit stairwell of a project in East New York, Brooklyn.
The charges against Liang include criminally negligent homicide, second-degree manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and two counts of official misconduct. Like Fernandez, Liang was a housing officer, assigned to patrol the neighborhood's Pink Houses, where the emphasis on quality of life crimes—and violence—was high.
On Tuesday, the details of what exactly went down at 11 PM on November 20, 2014, when Gurley and his friend Melissa Butler were headed downstairs from her apartment, were deeply dissected. The prosecution called Miguel Rivera, a resident of the building who had been friendly with Butler. Rivera was in his apartment with his wife, Melissa Lopez, when Butler frantically knocked in search of help as Gurley lay dying on the floor.
"She was panicking," he told the court. "Like, 'Oh my God, there's blood on my hands.'"
While Lopez—who testified Monday—jumped to call 9-1-1, Rivera stayed in the doorframe, assessing the situation from afar. He did not, he conceded, head down to see Gurley's body himself in the landing below. But he told the court that Liang looked just fine throughout it all—an account the defense contested, saying Rivera had previously told prosecutors Liang "was panicking and said, 'I shot him' and then said, 'Oh shit, let's get out of here.'"
After Rivera's testimony, the prosecution asked the two officers who responded to the radio call to offer context on the incident.
First up was Officer Salvatore Tramontana, who was on patrol with Fernandez at the Cypress Houses, another housing project down the block, at the time of the shooting. When the two arrived at the scene, Tramontana said he took over CPR for Melissa Butler, while his partner checked the stairwells for any other activity.
Like Fernandez, Tramontana's cross-examination mostly focused on how a housing officer should act in potentially perilous situations, and specifically "vertical patrols." The controversial procedure consists of officers scanning a building, floor by floor, as Liang and his partner were doing at the time of Gurley's death.
Tramontana told the court he arrived at the crime scene with his gun still in his holster, but reaffirmed, "Sometimes, you don't know when to pull it out." He added that being in a stairwell doesn't necessarily mean an officer would have his or her gun out; that it really depended on the situation. The protocol is the central issue here: Was Liang acting recklessly, and out of line from standard practice, when he fired the shot that ultimately killed Gurley?
The day before, prosecutors painted a scene where Liang failed at every junction: he fired his 9mm Glock sidearm without first scanning the scene; he failed to administer CPR, a tactic in which he was trained, after Gurley was hit by his ricocheting bullet; and he failed to call for help immediately—instead reportedly texting his union rep—as Butler performed CPR on her dying friend, prosecutors said.
"Peter Liang broke rule after rule after rule," Assistant District Attorney Gary Fieldner told the courtroom in his opening statement Monday.
When Fernandez took the stand on Tuesday, he told the court he was "informally trained" to have his gun out during vertical patrols. The defense honed in on that as an indication of Liang's innocence, the idea being that the shooting was a tragic accident that could happen to anyone on the job. Fernandez also told the court that the lights were out on the eighth floor, where Liang fired his gun, flashlight in hand.
A video played for the court during the testimony of Detective Matthew Steinar, a veteran crime scene investigator who surveyed the stairwell the next morning, corroborated Fernandez's claim. It was a first-person perspective of the walk down, which was dark and silent—almost Blair Witch Project esque. Gurley's clothes and blood smears are still visible on the concrete by the doorway on the fifth floor, where he eventually collapsed and died.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I seriously doubt Officer Liang would have been charged and tried for anything were it not for the ‘Ferguson effect.’ Before Michael brown was shot dead by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, the Liang case would have been considered a tragic accident. I think that’s what it really was.
I can understand why Liang called his union rep instead of performing CPR on Gurley or giving first aid to Melissa Butler. He panicked when he saw that he had shot an unarmed man and figured he would be treated exactly as he has been treated.
Vice News
January 27, 2016
On Tuesday afternoon in Brooklyn Supreme Court, defense attorney Robert Brown asked New York City Police Officer Andrae Fernandez when public housing cops are supposed to unholster their guns.
Fernandez paused, looking confused. "Can you rephrase, please?" he asked. The attorney retraced his steps, asking instead how many times Fernandez has pulled out his own gun in eight years on the force. Again Fernandez hesitated, visibly pondering the query. "Hundreds of times?" Brown suggested, breaking the silence.
"That's fair to say, yes," the officer responded.
The answer was exactly what the lawyer was looking for. It suggests armed caution is only natural for a public housing officer, like Fernandez, who polices in New York City's most dangerous neighborhoods. The grim contention comprised the meat of the defense on day two of the Akai Gurley trial, in which Officer Peter Liang is being tried for the accidental—but fatal—shooting of Gurley, a 28-year-old unarmed black man, in the decrepit stairwell of a project in East New York, Brooklyn.
The charges against Liang include criminally negligent homicide, second-degree manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and two counts of official misconduct. Like Fernandez, Liang was a housing officer, assigned to patrol the neighborhood's Pink Houses, where the emphasis on quality of life crimes—and violence—was high.
On Tuesday, the details of what exactly went down at 11 PM on November 20, 2014, when Gurley and his friend Melissa Butler were headed downstairs from her apartment, were deeply dissected. The prosecution called Miguel Rivera, a resident of the building who had been friendly with Butler. Rivera was in his apartment with his wife, Melissa Lopez, when Butler frantically knocked in search of help as Gurley lay dying on the floor.
"She was panicking," he told the court. "Like, 'Oh my God, there's blood on my hands.'"
While Lopez—who testified Monday—jumped to call 9-1-1, Rivera stayed in the doorframe, assessing the situation from afar. He did not, he conceded, head down to see Gurley's body himself in the landing below. But he told the court that Liang looked just fine throughout it all—an account the defense contested, saying Rivera had previously told prosecutors Liang "was panicking and said, 'I shot him' and then said, 'Oh shit, let's get out of here.'"
After Rivera's testimony, the prosecution asked the two officers who responded to the radio call to offer context on the incident.
First up was Officer Salvatore Tramontana, who was on patrol with Fernandez at the Cypress Houses, another housing project down the block, at the time of the shooting. When the two arrived at the scene, Tramontana said he took over CPR for Melissa Butler, while his partner checked the stairwells for any other activity.
Like Fernandez, Tramontana's cross-examination mostly focused on how a housing officer should act in potentially perilous situations, and specifically "vertical patrols." The controversial procedure consists of officers scanning a building, floor by floor, as Liang and his partner were doing at the time of Gurley's death.
Tramontana told the court he arrived at the crime scene with his gun still in his holster, but reaffirmed, "Sometimes, you don't know when to pull it out." He added that being in a stairwell doesn't necessarily mean an officer would have his or her gun out; that it really depended on the situation. The protocol is the central issue here: Was Liang acting recklessly, and out of line from standard practice, when he fired the shot that ultimately killed Gurley?
The day before, prosecutors painted a scene where Liang failed at every junction: he fired his 9mm Glock sidearm without first scanning the scene; he failed to administer CPR, a tactic in which he was trained, after Gurley was hit by his ricocheting bullet; and he failed to call for help immediately—instead reportedly texting his union rep—as Butler performed CPR on her dying friend, prosecutors said.
"Peter Liang broke rule after rule after rule," Assistant District Attorney Gary Fieldner told the courtroom in his opening statement Monday.
When Fernandez took the stand on Tuesday, he told the court he was "informally trained" to have his gun out during vertical patrols. The defense honed in on that as an indication of Liang's innocence, the idea being that the shooting was a tragic accident that could happen to anyone on the job. Fernandez also told the court that the lights were out on the eighth floor, where Liang fired his gun, flashlight in hand.
A video played for the court during the testimony of Detective Matthew Steinar, a veteran crime scene investigator who surveyed the stairwell the next morning, corroborated Fernandez's claim. It was a first-person perspective of the walk down, which was dark and silent—almost Blair Witch Project esque. Gurley's clothes and blood smears are still visible on the concrete by the doorway on the fifth floor, where he eventually collapsed and died.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I seriously doubt Officer Liang would have been charged and tried for anything were it not for the ‘Ferguson effect.’ Before Michael brown was shot dead by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, the Liang case would have been considered a tragic accident. I think that’s what it really was.
I can understand why Liang called his union rep instead of performing CPR on Gurley or giving first aid to Melissa Butler. He panicked when he saw that he had shot an unarmed man and figured he would be treated exactly as he has been treated.
ADOLF EICHMANN: I WAS ONLY FOLLOWING ORDERS
Two days before he was hanged, Eichmann sent a letter to Israel’s president begging not to be executed
On June 1, 1962, Adolf Eichmann was hanged by the Israelis after a two-year trial. Eichmann was one of the leading Nazi organizers of the Holocaust. Reinhard Heydrich had placed him in charge of rounding up and shipping Jews to death camps in German-occupied Poland. Eichmann did his job so well that he is held largely responsible for the extermination of six million Jews.
Just recently found was a handwritten letter dated May 29, 1962, which Eichmann sent to Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, in which he begged not to be executed. The letter in part read:
There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders.
I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty.
I am not able to recognize the court’s ruling as just, and I ask, Your Honor Mr. President, to exercise your right to grant pardons, and order that the death penalty not be carried out.
I’m sure Eichmann was asked many times how he felt about having played a leading role in the murder of six million Jews. I suspect he probably shrugged his shoulders and replied, “It was just a job.”
The ‘I was only following orders’ excuse rarely works and it did not work for Adolph Eichmann.
On June 1, 1962, Adolf Eichmann was hanged by the Israelis after a two-year trial. Eichmann was one of the leading Nazi organizers of the Holocaust. Reinhard Heydrich had placed him in charge of rounding up and shipping Jews to death camps in German-occupied Poland. Eichmann did his job so well that he is held largely responsible for the extermination of six million Jews.
Just recently found was a handwritten letter dated May 29, 1962, which Eichmann sent to Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, in which he begged not to be executed. The letter in part read:
There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders.
I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty.
I am not able to recognize the court’s ruling as just, and I ask, Your Honor Mr. President, to exercise your right to grant pardons, and order that the death penalty not be carried out.
I’m sure Eichmann was asked many times how he felt about having played a leading role in the murder of six million Jews. I suspect he probably shrugged his shoulders and replied, “It was just a job.”
The ‘I was only following orders’ excuse rarely works and it did not work for Adolph Eichmann.
Friday, January 29, 2016
SHE WAS ONE OF THE GOOD ONES
By Bob Walsh
There are a lot of idiots, malcontents, incompetents and pervs in the ranks of education in this country today. I have no problem pointing them out. I therefore feel obliged to point out the really good ones when they come along.
Susan Jordan was one such. She was the principle of the Amy Beverland Elementary School in Indianapolis for 22 years. Yesterday afternoon she was out in front of the school as school was letting out and she saw an uncontrolled large school bus jump the curb and head for a group of her students. She ran in front of the bus and knocked several students out of the way. She was killed by the bus. She was the only one killed. Two students were injured on the ground. None of those in the bus were hurt.
Like I said, she was one of the good ones. Really, really good.
EDITOR’S NOTE: And, unfortunately, now she’s gone.
There are a lot of idiots, malcontents, incompetents and pervs in the ranks of education in this country today. I have no problem pointing them out. I therefore feel obliged to point out the really good ones when they come along.
Susan Jordan was one such. She was the principle of the Amy Beverland Elementary School in Indianapolis for 22 years. Yesterday afternoon she was out in front of the school as school was letting out and she saw an uncontrolled large school bus jump the curb and head for a group of her students. She ran in front of the bus and knocked several students out of the way. She was killed by the bus. She was the only one killed. Two students were injured on the ground. None of those in the bus were hurt.
Like I said, she was one of the good ones. Really, really good.
EDITOR’S NOTE: And, unfortunately, now she’s gone.
CLEVER, LUCKY, OR SOMETHING ELSE?
By bob Walsh
A combination of things led to very bad luck for three muggers in SF recently. Whether they were due to a clever victim, pure luck or politics is hard to say, could be a combination.
Scott Weiner is a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the local legislative body of the City and County of San Francisco. Last month he was mugged by three people who wanted his cell phone. He did them a deal and told them he would give them $200 that he would withdraw from an ATM if they did NOT take his phone.
He held up his end of the bargain. Surprisingly, they did likewise. Weiner SAYS he deliberately maneuvered them so they would show up on the ATM camera.
Using the photos the cops (who probably seldom actually INVESTIGATE cell phone robberies if they don’t involve local politicians) recently managed to arrest Damien Wells, 19 and Lasonya Wells, 40. The third suspect is still at large.
Damien Wells was on felony probation at the time of the crime. He and the female are facing various charges including robbery, extortion, RSP, grand theft and really bad choice of victims. (OK, I made that last one up.)
A combination of things led to very bad luck for three muggers in SF recently. Whether they were due to a clever victim, pure luck or politics is hard to say, could be a combination.
Scott Weiner is a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the local legislative body of the City and County of San Francisco. Last month he was mugged by three people who wanted his cell phone. He did them a deal and told them he would give them $200 that he would withdraw from an ATM if they did NOT take his phone.
He held up his end of the bargain. Surprisingly, they did likewise. Weiner SAYS he deliberately maneuvered them so they would show up on the ATM camera.
Using the photos the cops (who probably seldom actually INVESTIGATE cell phone robberies if they don’t involve local politicians) recently managed to arrest Damien Wells, 19 and Lasonya Wells, 40. The third suspect is still at large.
Damien Wells was on felony probation at the time of the crime. He and the female are facing various charges including robbery, extortion, RSP, grand theft and really bad choice of victims. (OK, I made that last one up.)
HOW STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO DO THIS?
By Bob Walsh
Various broadcast news outlets are reporting today a number of poisonings, including at least two deaths, due to a do-it-yourself concoction known popularly as Dew-Shine.
Dew-Shine is a mixture of Mountain Dew and racing fuel. It is drunk mostly by redneck teenage boys who are really, really stupid. The principle ingredient of racing fuel is Methyl Alcohol, often with a little nitro-benzine thrown in. It will get you drunk, just before you DIE. Methyl Alcohol and Ethyl Alcohol are NOT the same thing. This shit WILL KILL YOU.
So, as a public service for all the not-too-bright teenage boys out there, stick to mixing your Mountain Dew with Everclear or a decent vodka. If you are lucky and don’t do anything else stupid you will probably survive that experience.
Various broadcast news outlets are reporting today a number of poisonings, including at least two deaths, due to a do-it-yourself concoction known popularly as Dew-Shine.
Dew-Shine is a mixture of Mountain Dew and racing fuel. It is drunk mostly by redneck teenage boys who are really, really stupid. The principle ingredient of racing fuel is Methyl Alcohol, often with a little nitro-benzine thrown in. It will get you drunk, just before you DIE. Methyl Alcohol and Ethyl Alcohol are NOT the same thing. This shit WILL KILL YOU.
So, as a public service for all the not-too-bright teenage boys out there, stick to mixing your Mountain Dew with Everclear or a decent vodka. If you are lucky and don’t do anything else stupid you will probably survive that experience.
6 CLEVELAND POLICE OFFICERS FIRED FOR ACTIONS IN FATAL 2012 CHASE
By Eliott C. McLaughlin
CNN
January 26, 2016
Six Cleveland police officers have been fired in connection with a November 2012 car chase that ended with officers firing 137 bullets at a car, killing Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, said Detective Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association.
Loomis identified the officers as Wilfredo Diaz, Brian Sabolik, Erin O'Donnell, Michael Farley, Chris Ereg and Michael Brelo.
Brelo, the only officer indicted in the incident, allegedly fired 49 of the shots, including 15 from the hood of the car carrying Russell and Williams. He was acquitted of manslaughter and felonious assault last year.
Police in a tweet Tuesday said six other officers were suspended without pay for up to a month and a 13th officer retired last year.
Loomis, a veteran of 23 years, vowed to get the fired officers' jobs back. There is "no rhyme or reason" to the dismissals, and he said he and other officers are scratching their heads because the firings seem random, as if names were picked out of a hat.
"This is nothing but politics. I have every confidence in the world we're going to get their jobs back. I'm not going to stand for it," Loomis said.
How, he asked, can the six officers be fired when a grand jury opted not to indict 12 of the 13 officers and the sole remaining officer, Brelo, was acquitted by Cuyahoga County Judge John P. O'Donnell?
In his May 2015 decision, O'Donnell ruled that Brelo's use of force was permissible because he had reason to believe he was threatened. And it couldn't be proved that Brelo's shots were the fatal ones, so the judge couldn't issue a guilty verdict on the manslaughter charge, he said.
'I don't trust police'
After the verdict, protesters outside the courthouse chanted, "No justice, no peace," a slogan popularized during the Michael Brown protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and the Eric Garner protests in New York.
The protests were largely peaceful, though at least 71 people were arrested that weekend for offenses including felonious assault, aggravated rioting, unlawful congregation and failure to disperse, police Chief Calvin Williams said.
Russell's and Williams' family members also frowned on the verdict.
"All I know is that I don't trust police no more. No police. None," Williams' brother, Alfredo Williams, said. "I can't recover from this. ...This verdict isn't real. This verdict is fake."
Loomis informed CNN of the firings as high-ranking police and city officials held a news conference regarding the 22-mile chase. During the chase, there were 46 supervisors on duty, 18 of whom were involved in the pursuit, said police Cmdr. James Chura, calling the incident unprecedented. Of those supervisors, one was terminated, two were demoted and nine were suspended for from three to 30 days.
As for the 105 officers involved in the pursuit, 63 were suspended for between one and 10 days, he said.
"We said we would conduct a fair process, and I believe we have done that," Mayor Frank Jackson said. "They will feel however they feel, but we conducted this in a fair way, with due process."
What happened that night?
The chase started the night of November 29, 2012, when a couple in a car sped away from an undercover officer.
Their engine backfired, sputtering and producing a loud bang in the tailpipe. Prosecutors said officers mistook the noise for gunshots, and a high-speed chase ensued.
Investigators said as many as 62 police cars joined at speeds of up to 100 mph through the streets of Cleveland.
After the chase, Russell rammed a police car in a middle school parking lot, police said.
That's when the bullets started flying.
An investigation revealed 13 police officers fired more than 100 times in eight seconds.
Brelo got out of his police car, climbed atop the hood of Russell's car and "fired at least 15 shots ... downward through the windshield into the victims at close range as he stood on the hood of Mr. Russell's car," Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGlinty said.
Brelo told investigators he thought he and his partner were in danger, believing the couple in the car were shooting.
"I've never been so afraid in my life," the former Marine told investigators. "I thought my partner and I would be shot and that we were going to be killed, at which point I drew my weapon and I shot through the windshield at the suspects."
Russell and Williams were both homeless with a history of mental illness and drug use, according to Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigations. Witnesses said they were most likely looking to buy drugs that night. A police officer ran a license plate check of the 1979 Chevy Malibu that Russell was driving. He had gotten it from a relative, and the check came back clean.
Still, the officer tried to pull him over for a turn signal violation. Russell then sped away.
CNN
January 26, 2016
Six Cleveland police officers have been fired in connection with a November 2012 car chase that ended with officers firing 137 bullets at a car, killing Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, said Detective Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association.
Loomis identified the officers as Wilfredo Diaz, Brian Sabolik, Erin O'Donnell, Michael Farley, Chris Ereg and Michael Brelo.
Brelo, the only officer indicted in the incident, allegedly fired 49 of the shots, including 15 from the hood of the car carrying Russell and Williams. He was acquitted of manslaughter and felonious assault last year.
Police in a tweet Tuesday said six other officers were suspended without pay for up to a month and a 13th officer retired last year.
Loomis, a veteran of 23 years, vowed to get the fired officers' jobs back. There is "no rhyme or reason" to the dismissals, and he said he and other officers are scratching their heads because the firings seem random, as if names were picked out of a hat.
"This is nothing but politics. I have every confidence in the world we're going to get their jobs back. I'm not going to stand for it," Loomis said.
How, he asked, can the six officers be fired when a grand jury opted not to indict 12 of the 13 officers and the sole remaining officer, Brelo, was acquitted by Cuyahoga County Judge John P. O'Donnell?
In his May 2015 decision, O'Donnell ruled that Brelo's use of force was permissible because he had reason to believe he was threatened. And it couldn't be proved that Brelo's shots were the fatal ones, so the judge couldn't issue a guilty verdict on the manslaughter charge, he said.
'I don't trust police'
After the verdict, protesters outside the courthouse chanted, "No justice, no peace," a slogan popularized during the Michael Brown protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and the Eric Garner protests in New York.
The protests were largely peaceful, though at least 71 people were arrested that weekend for offenses including felonious assault, aggravated rioting, unlawful congregation and failure to disperse, police Chief Calvin Williams said.
Russell's and Williams' family members also frowned on the verdict.
"All I know is that I don't trust police no more. No police. None," Williams' brother, Alfredo Williams, said. "I can't recover from this. ...This verdict isn't real. This verdict is fake."
Loomis informed CNN of the firings as high-ranking police and city officials held a news conference regarding the 22-mile chase. During the chase, there were 46 supervisors on duty, 18 of whom were involved in the pursuit, said police Cmdr. James Chura, calling the incident unprecedented. Of those supervisors, one was terminated, two were demoted and nine were suspended for from three to 30 days.
As for the 105 officers involved in the pursuit, 63 were suspended for between one and 10 days, he said.
"We said we would conduct a fair process, and I believe we have done that," Mayor Frank Jackson said. "They will feel however they feel, but we conducted this in a fair way, with due process."
What happened that night?
The chase started the night of November 29, 2012, when a couple in a car sped away from an undercover officer.
Their engine backfired, sputtering and producing a loud bang in the tailpipe. Prosecutors said officers mistook the noise for gunshots, and a high-speed chase ensued.
Investigators said as many as 62 police cars joined at speeds of up to 100 mph through the streets of Cleveland.
After the chase, Russell rammed a police car in a middle school parking lot, police said.
That's when the bullets started flying.
An investigation revealed 13 police officers fired more than 100 times in eight seconds.
Brelo got out of his police car, climbed atop the hood of Russell's car and "fired at least 15 shots ... downward through the windshield into the victims at close range as he stood on the hood of Mr. Russell's car," Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGlinty said.
Brelo told investigators he thought he and his partner were in danger, believing the couple in the car were shooting.
"I've never been so afraid in my life," the former Marine told investigators. "I thought my partner and I would be shot and that we were going to be killed, at which point I drew my weapon and I shot through the windshield at the suspects."
Russell and Williams were both homeless with a history of mental illness and drug use, according to Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigations. Witnesses said they were most likely looking to buy drugs that night. A police officer ran a license plate check of the 1979 Chevy Malibu that Russell was driving. He had gotten it from a relative, and the check came back clean.
Still, the officer tried to pull him over for a turn signal violation. Russell then sped away.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF LONG HELD UN BIAS AGAINST ISRAEL
UN chief Ban Ki-moon justified terrorism when he told the Security Council that it is human nature for the Palestinians to attack Israeli civilians in reaction to Israel’s occupation and oppression
The UN has long been biased against Israel. UN chief Ban Ki-moon provided another example Tuesday when he told the Security Council that Israel is to blame for the wave of stabbings by Palestinians against Israeli women. Here is how he put the blame on Israel:
“These provocative acts [settlement activities] are bound to increase the growth of settler populations, further heighten tension and undermine any prospects for a political road ahead.”
“Palestinian frustration is growing under the weight of a half century of occupation and the paralysis of the peace process. As oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.”
In other words, Israel is to blame for Palestinian terrorism. Ban Ki-moon’s statement only serves to encourage further Palestinian terrorism.
Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly condemned the UN chief’s remarks. He said:
“The comments of the UN Secretary General encourage terror. There is no justification for terror.”
“The Palestinian murderers do not want to build a state; they declare publicly that they want to destroy a state. They do not murder for peace and they do not murder for human rights.”
“The UN has long ago lost its neutrality and its moral powers.”
Netanyahu is spot on. The UN, as well as the Europeans and the U.S., ignore the oft repeated vows in Arabic by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that “there will be only one state from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea and that will be a Palestinian state.” Furthermore, Abbas and other Palestinian leaders have declared that there will be no Jews in a Palestinian State.
Fuck the UN! Fuck Ban Ki-moon! And Fuck Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian terrorists!
The UN has long been biased against Israel. UN chief Ban Ki-moon provided another example Tuesday when he told the Security Council that Israel is to blame for the wave of stabbings by Palestinians against Israeli women. Here is how he put the blame on Israel:
“These provocative acts [settlement activities] are bound to increase the growth of settler populations, further heighten tension and undermine any prospects for a political road ahead.”
“Palestinian frustration is growing under the weight of a half century of occupation and the paralysis of the peace process. As oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.”
In other words, Israel is to blame for Palestinian terrorism. Ban Ki-moon’s statement only serves to encourage further Palestinian terrorism.
Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly condemned the UN chief’s remarks. He said:
“The comments of the UN Secretary General encourage terror. There is no justification for terror.”
“The Palestinian murderers do not want to build a state; they declare publicly that they want to destroy a state. They do not murder for peace and they do not murder for human rights.”
“The UN has long ago lost its neutrality and its moral powers.”
Netanyahu is spot on. The UN, as well as the Europeans and the U.S., ignore the oft repeated vows in Arabic by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that “there will be only one state from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea and that will be a Palestinian state.” Furthermore, Abbas and other Palestinian leaders have declared that there will be no Jews in a Palestinian State.
Fuck the UN! Fuck Ban Ki-moon! And Fuck Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian terrorists!
Thursday, January 28, 2016
DRIVING WHILE WATCHING PORN CAUSES CAR ORGASM
Clifford Ray Jones was driving along in Detroit while watching porn and beating his meat when suddenly his car had an orgasm and ejected his naked ass out through the sunroof
The Michigan State Police investigated a fatal traffic accident that occurred at 3:30 a.m. Sunday in Detroit.
It seems as though a 1966 Toyota had an orgasm because Clifford Ray Jones, 58, was driving while watching porn on his cellphone and beating his meat. The car got so excited that it lost control and threw Jones, who was naked from the waist down and not wearing a seat belt, out through the sunroof, killing him.
Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw said it’s the strangest thing he’s ever encountered on the roadway. “We see people putting on makeup, we see people doing different things as far as hygiene, as far as reading books, it’s almost to the fact there’s so much technology out there a lot of people are more paying attention to what they’re doing other than driving their cars,” he told reporters.
The moral of this story is that an old fart and an old car don’t mix if the driver is watching porn and beating his meat. Come to think of it though, a young dude and a 2016 model car wouldn’t mix either under the same circumstances.
In other words, keep your fucking hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.
The Michigan State Police investigated a fatal traffic accident that occurred at 3:30 a.m. Sunday in Detroit.
It seems as though a 1966 Toyota had an orgasm because Clifford Ray Jones, 58, was driving while watching porn on his cellphone and beating his meat. The car got so excited that it lost control and threw Jones, who was naked from the waist down and not wearing a seat belt, out through the sunroof, killing him.
Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw said it’s the strangest thing he’s ever encountered on the roadway. “We see people putting on makeup, we see people doing different things as far as hygiene, as far as reading books, it’s almost to the fact there’s so much technology out there a lot of people are more paying attention to what they’re doing other than driving their cars,” he told reporters.
The moral of this story is that an old fart and an old car don’t mix if the driver is watching porn and beating his meat. Come to think of it though, a young dude and a 2016 model car wouldn’t mix either under the same circumstances.
In other words, keep your fucking hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.
DALLAS JURY FINDS DAD NOT GUILTY FOR TAKING TWEEN DAUGHTER’S PHONE
Family dispute over cell phone leads to jury trial
By David Goins
WFAA
January 27, 2016
DALLAS – A Dallas County jury found a father not guilty Tuesday of theft for taking away his daughter’s cell phone as punishment.
Ronald Jackson, 36, was charged with theft of property of at least $50 but under $500, a Class B misdemeanor.
Dallas County Criminal Court Judge Lisa Green ordered the jury to find Jackson not guilty after ruling the state failed to present sufficient evidence to continue the case.
Jackson said he took his 12-year-old daughter’s cell phone as punishment after finding inappropriate texts in September 2013. A few hours later, officers from the Grand Prairie Police Department showed up at his front door, asking for the iPhone 4 back.
"At that point, I decided the police don't interfere with my ability to parent my daughter," Jackson said.
Michelle Steppe, the child's mother, sees it differently.
"As a mom, I'm upset because — number one — the property belongs to me," she said.
Steppe told jurors on Monday she called police the day her daughter lost the use of her phone for disciplinary reasons.
"You can't take someone's property, regardless if you're a parent or not," Steppe said.
Ronald Jackson and Michelle Steppe readily admit they are not a couple anymore. Jackson said they were never married but had a child together. Steppe said Jackson didn't become a part of his daughter's life until she was seven.
Three months after the phone incident, Jackson received a citation in the mail for theft of property less than $50 in value, a Class C misdemeanor. According to court documents, the city attorney's office offered a plea deal in January 2014 if Jackson returned the phone.
Jackson hired an attorney and requested a jury trial in municipal court.
Court filings indicate the city attorney's office requested the case be dismissed that same month and refiled with the Dallas County District Attorney's office as a more stringent Class B misdemeanor, punishable by six months in jail and a $2,000 fine.
Cameron Gray, a defense attorney representing Jackson, said a warrant was issued, and his client was arrested at his home in the middle of the night in April 2015. Jackson posted a cash bail of $1,500 to get out of jail.
During the two-day trial, Jackson's daughter, now 15, took the stand and testified about her father taking her phone.
"It was the last thing as a mother I wanted my daughter to go through," Steppe says. "I'm always here for my kids."
Steppe said she was confused by the verdict because she purchased the phone and maintained cell phone plans under her name.
"Even if you purchase something with your own money and have a receipt, it's not yours," Steppe says. "Someone can take it from you."
Jackson says the ordeal has permanently ended any chances to have a relationship with his daughter.
"I have to separate myself from them," Jackson says. "I can't ever have a relationship with them again."
Gray says the case is not over. He says he plans to file a federal complaint for civil rights violations for the way his client was treated by the Grand Prairie Police Department and the city attorney's office.
Detective Lyle Gensler with Grand Prairie police told News8 officers made several unsuccessful attempts to return the property to its owner.
"After unsuccessful recover of the property, this case, as with any other of this monetary value, was investigated and those results were provided to the Dallas County District Attorney’s Intake Office who subsequently forwarded it to the trial court for prosecution,” Gensler said in a statement.
Jackson still has the phone.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Accept a theft complaint because a father took his brat daughter’s phone away? It must have been a slow day, a really slow day, at the Dallas County district attorney’s office.
The DA allowed a vindictive ex-live-in to play his office like a fiddle. Her vindictiveness, together with the connivance of the DA, cost this father an arm and a leg.
By David Goins
WFAA
January 27, 2016
DALLAS – A Dallas County jury found a father not guilty Tuesday of theft for taking away his daughter’s cell phone as punishment.
Ronald Jackson, 36, was charged with theft of property of at least $50 but under $500, a Class B misdemeanor.
Dallas County Criminal Court Judge Lisa Green ordered the jury to find Jackson not guilty after ruling the state failed to present sufficient evidence to continue the case.
Jackson said he took his 12-year-old daughter’s cell phone as punishment after finding inappropriate texts in September 2013. A few hours later, officers from the Grand Prairie Police Department showed up at his front door, asking for the iPhone 4 back.
"At that point, I decided the police don't interfere with my ability to parent my daughter," Jackson said.
Michelle Steppe, the child's mother, sees it differently.
"As a mom, I'm upset because — number one — the property belongs to me," she said.
Steppe told jurors on Monday she called police the day her daughter lost the use of her phone for disciplinary reasons.
"You can't take someone's property, regardless if you're a parent or not," Steppe said.
Ronald Jackson and Michelle Steppe readily admit they are not a couple anymore. Jackson said they were never married but had a child together. Steppe said Jackson didn't become a part of his daughter's life until she was seven.
Three months after the phone incident, Jackson received a citation in the mail for theft of property less than $50 in value, a Class C misdemeanor. According to court documents, the city attorney's office offered a plea deal in January 2014 if Jackson returned the phone.
Jackson hired an attorney and requested a jury trial in municipal court.
Court filings indicate the city attorney's office requested the case be dismissed that same month and refiled with the Dallas County District Attorney's office as a more stringent Class B misdemeanor, punishable by six months in jail and a $2,000 fine.
Cameron Gray, a defense attorney representing Jackson, said a warrant was issued, and his client was arrested at his home in the middle of the night in April 2015. Jackson posted a cash bail of $1,500 to get out of jail.
During the two-day trial, Jackson's daughter, now 15, took the stand and testified about her father taking her phone.
"It was the last thing as a mother I wanted my daughter to go through," Steppe says. "I'm always here for my kids."
Steppe said she was confused by the verdict because she purchased the phone and maintained cell phone plans under her name.
"Even if you purchase something with your own money and have a receipt, it's not yours," Steppe says. "Someone can take it from you."
Jackson says the ordeal has permanently ended any chances to have a relationship with his daughter.
"I have to separate myself from them," Jackson says. "I can't ever have a relationship with them again."
Gray says the case is not over. He says he plans to file a federal complaint for civil rights violations for the way his client was treated by the Grand Prairie Police Department and the city attorney's office.
Detective Lyle Gensler with Grand Prairie police told News8 officers made several unsuccessful attempts to return the property to its owner.
"After unsuccessful recover of the property, this case, as with any other of this monetary value, was investigated and those results were provided to the Dallas County District Attorney’s Intake Office who subsequently forwarded it to the trial court for prosecution,” Gensler said in a statement.
Jackson still has the phone.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Accept a theft complaint because a father took his brat daughter’s phone away? It must have been a slow day, a really slow day, at the Dallas County district attorney’s office.
The DA allowed a vindictive ex-live-in to play his office like a fiddle. Her vindictiveness, together with the connivance of the DA, cost this father an arm and a leg.
HOW DAVID PETRAEUS AVOIDED FELONY CHARGES AND POSSIBLE PRISON TIME
By Adam Goldman
The Washington Post
January 25, 2016
Inside a secure conference room on the sixth floor of the Justice Department in early 2014, top federal law enforcement ¬officials gathered to hear what criminal charges prosecutors were contemplating against David H. Petraeus, the ¬storied wartime general and former CIA director whose public career had ended about 15 months earlier over an extramarital affair.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and FBI Director James B. Comey listened as prosecutors did a mock run-through of the government’s case, a preview of how they would present their evidence to Petraeus’s lawyers in order, they hoped, to force a guilty plea.
The presentation included felony charges: lying to the FBI and violating a section of the Espionage Act. A conviction on either carried potentially years in prison.
They were also considering bringing the same charges against Petraeus’s biographer and former mistress, Paula Broadwell.
The government would never file those charges. Not everyone at Justice shared the prosecutors’ confidence, and lawyers for Petraeus and Broadwell separately pushed back hard, saying they would fight and beat the charges being considered. Moreover, with its mix of sex and government secrets, a trial promised to be an uncomfortably tawdry affair, one some in the government — as well as defense lawyers — preferred to avoid.
Petraeus, in the end, pleaded guilty last year to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material. No charges were brought against Broadwell.
The Justice Department has never discussed how it reached its decision to accept a plea on the lesser charge. But six current and former U.S. officials, as well as others familiar with the case, provided the first detailed look at the internal debates and wrangling with Petraeus’s lawyers that took place before the retired four-star general entered his guilty plea in federal court in Charlotte. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private legal deliberations.
As part of the agreement, Pet¬raeus admitted that he improperly removed and retained highly sensitive information in eight personal notebooks that he gave to Broadwell. The Justice Department said the information, if disclosed, could have caused “exceptionally grave damage.” Officials said the notebooks contained code words for secret intelligence programs, the identities of covert officers, and information about war strategy and deliberative discussions with the National Security Council.
The plea agreement left some in the Justice Department angry, particularly at the FBI, and some agents have argued privately that it will hamper future efforts to secure prison terms in leak cases. But others in the government defended the deal as the only viable conclusion to a case in which a successful prosecution on the more serious charges was far from certain.
“Nobody was going to be happy with the outcome,” a former Justice Department official said. “There was nothing about this case that was typical.”
The plea agreement, while helping Petraeus avoid the prospect of prison, probably has ended whatever ambition he had to become president. It also does not protect him from further punishment — such as stripping him of a star — by the military. The Army recently recommended that Petraeus not face further punishment, but the final decision rests with Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, who is considering how to rule, according to Pentagon officials.
“I have turned the page on these matters, I am looking forward, and I will have no further comment. I resigned as CIA Director, publicly apologized for my conduct, and formally accepted responsibility,” Petraeus, 63, said in a statement. “I served my country for over 38 years, including five combat commands during my final decade in uniform. I will leave it to the public and to history to judge that record. Beyond that, I will always regret the mistakes I made, and I will always be grateful to those who have supported me.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
Following an email trail
In October 2012, Sean Joyce, the deputy director of the FBI, informed Petraeus, then CIA director, that a pair of FBI agents out of Tampa needed to come to agency headquarters to talk to him. They were investigating a cyber-stalking case.
The FBI had discovered that Broadwell had sent anonymous emails to a Tampa socialite named Jill Kelley and her husband months earlier. Kelley, who described the emails as harassing, contacted a friend who was an agent in the FBI’s Tampa field office.
The FBI became interested because the emails contained information about Petraeus’s schedule, raising concerns about a possible threat to the CIA director. As the investigation widened and Broadwell, now 43, was identified, the bureau discovered that she had also sent anonymous emails to military officials — and appeared to be involved in a romantic relationship with Petraeus.
On Oct. 26, the Tampa agents arrived at the CIA and began an interview in the director’s office on the seventh floor. The agents wanted to talk to him about Broadwell and Kelley.
Petraeus admitted the affair with Broadwell and told the agents he had lost his moral compass. He said the relationship began after he left the military.
In the interview at Langley, the FBI agents also asked the CIA director about secret PowerPoint briefings on the Afghan war that were in Broadwell’s possession. They also asked if he had provided classified information to Broadwell or facilitated her obtaining it. He denied ever doing that — a statement that later led some in the Justice Department to argue that he should be charged with lying to the FBI when it emerged that she had more sensitive material.
The interview ended after about an hour, with Petraeus realizing that his career was in jeopardy because of the affair.
He spoke with Joyce and asked if there was any way to quietly resolve the issue and avoid a scandal, according to former and current U.S. officials.
The FBI’s position was clear: The agents were going to follow the facts.
James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, learned about the investigation. Petraeus offered his resignation but said he hoped there was a way he could remain CIA director.
On Nov. 9, 2012, he stepped down.
An expanding investigation
What had first appeared to be a cyber-stalking case was rapidly expanding into a national security leak investigation as FBI agents copied the hard drive of Broadwell’s computer and found secret documents. On Nov. 12, with her consent, agents searched Broadwell’s house.
In addition, investigators discovered more than 100 photographs she had taken of highly classified information from eight bound notebooks Petraeus had kept while commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.
They also found other classified material in her possession linked to a period in 2003 when she served on a Joint Terrorism Task Force in Denver.
It eventually became clear to the FBI that Petraeus had given those journals to Broadwell as part of her research for her book; the FBI seized the journals in April 2013 after searching Petraeus’s house in Virginia.
Broadwell also recorded a conversation in which Petraeus told her that the journals contained classified information, a statement the FBI would attempt to use against him.
But there was disagreement inside the Justice Department and the FBI about whether Broadwell should be charged, with some arguing that she enjoyed protection as a journalist.
In June 2013, following harsh criticism of leak investigations targeting the news media, Holder said he would not indict any journalists for doing their jobs. Broadwell had media credentials while researching in Afghanistan, and she had written stories and op-eds in newspapers and policy journals.
Her lawyers, including Robert F. Muse, met with prosecutors in May 2014.
“We established that Paula Broadwell was a fully credentialed member of the media and entitled to all the protections under the First Amendment and DOJ policy,” Muse said. “Ultimately the government’s decision is consistent with what the attorney general told Congress and what President Obama stated: Namely, members of the media would not be prosecuted for doing their job.”
He said he had no further comment on the case.
Former and current Justice Department officials said prosecutors did give her media status.
The cyber-stalking investigation that began in Tampa was closed at the end of 2012, but prosecutors in Charlotte, where Broadwell lived, continued to examine whether Petraeus had leaked classified information and whether he had lied to the FBI.
In July 2013, Petraeus’s lawyers met with prosecutors in North Carolina who told them that there was an issue in the case involving classified information and that they would need security clearances before it could be fully discussed. Also in attendance at that meeting in Charlotte was Richard Scott, a lawyer in the counterespionage section of the Justice Department’s national security division in Washington — and Petraeus’s lawyers regarded his presence as an ominous sign.
Months of silence ensued, however, until February 2014, when the lawyers were invited back to Charlotte for a meeting with prosecutors, who planned to lay out their case — the same presentation Holder and Comey had listened to.
The prosecutors emphasized that they were pursuing felonies, not misdemeanors, including a conspiracy charge. The presentation focused in particular on the contents of the eight notebooks. Lawyers for the general learned for the first time that the Justice Department was threatening to charge Petraeus with three felonies, including “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information” under the Espionage Act.
A conviction could have sent Petraeus to prison and cost him his pension.
Slowly reaching a deal
In late April, at a meeting in Washington with prosecutors, Petraeus himself listened to the same presentation of the government’s case.
His legal team later rejected any possibility of pleading guilty to felony offenses. In July 2014 in Charlotte, Petraeus’s lawyers told prosecutors they couldn’t show that he intended to disclose classified information and pointed to Broadwell’s book, which contained none and had been personally vetted by the general. And they brought up an array of classified material that had appeared in other books and articles, including some written by Cabinet members, and had not led to prosecutions. That showed, they said, that some of the material Broadwell had obtained from Petraeus was already in the public domain.
They also said his statements to the FBI weren’t material to the investigation and didn’t impede it. And the lawyers pointed to Justice Department guidelines, which say it is not policy to charge “in situations in which a suspect, during an investigation, merely denies guilt in response to questioning by the government.”
In early February 2015, lawyers for Petraeus and the government met once again at the Bicentennial Building in the District. James Melendres, a prosecutor with the national security division, offered a deal.
For this to go away, he said, Petraeus would have to plead guilty to lying to the FBI and mishandling classified information, a misdemeanor. In the statement of facts that would accompany the plea agreement, prosecutors also said they would want to reference a message Petraeus sent to the CIA workforce in 2012 after John Kiriakou, a former agency officer, was convicted of leaking classified information.
“Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy,” Petraeus had said.
Petraeus’s lawyer, David E. Kendall, declined to comment. But another person familiar with the meeting said he described the lying charge as “a nonstarter.” The Kiriakou reference was also off the table, he said.
Scott, the national security division prosecutor, threatened to call off the talks if Kendall insisted on a no-contest plea. On this, Kendall relented.
The end came about a week later when the sides hammered out the agreement on a misdemeanor guilty plea. Petraeus, in a statement of facts, would admit that his statements to the FBI “were false.” The agreed fine was $40,000, and he accepted probation for two years.
On April 23, 2015, Petraeus pleaded guilty in Charlotte. The judge upped the fine to $100,000.
A former senior Justice Department official said it was the “cleanest” possible outcome for both sides.
Holder, who was planning to step down and didn’t want to leave the case for the next attorney general, approved the settlement. He declined to comment. But he offered this explanation for his decision at a media event last year, when asked if there was a double standard that allowed Petraeus to plead to a misdemeanor when his department had zealously pursued others for similar alleged crimes.
“There were factors that made the resolution of the case appropriate,” Holder said. “There were some unique things that existed in that case that would have made the prosecution at the felony level and a conviction at the felony level very, very, very problematic.”
Julie Tate, Craig Whitlock and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.
The Washington Post
January 25, 2016
Inside a secure conference room on the sixth floor of the Justice Department in early 2014, top federal law enforcement ¬officials gathered to hear what criminal charges prosecutors were contemplating against David H. Petraeus, the ¬storied wartime general and former CIA director whose public career had ended about 15 months earlier over an extramarital affair.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and FBI Director James B. Comey listened as prosecutors did a mock run-through of the government’s case, a preview of how they would present their evidence to Petraeus’s lawyers in order, they hoped, to force a guilty plea.
The presentation included felony charges: lying to the FBI and violating a section of the Espionage Act. A conviction on either carried potentially years in prison.
They were also considering bringing the same charges against Petraeus’s biographer and former mistress, Paula Broadwell.
The government would never file those charges. Not everyone at Justice shared the prosecutors’ confidence, and lawyers for Petraeus and Broadwell separately pushed back hard, saying they would fight and beat the charges being considered. Moreover, with its mix of sex and government secrets, a trial promised to be an uncomfortably tawdry affair, one some in the government — as well as defense lawyers — preferred to avoid.
Petraeus, in the end, pleaded guilty last year to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material. No charges were brought against Broadwell.
The Justice Department has never discussed how it reached its decision to accept a plea on the lesser charge. But six current and former U.S. officials, as well as others familiar with the case, provided the first detailed look at the internal debates and wrangling with Petraeus’s lawyers that took place before the retired four-star general entered his guilty plea in federal court in Charlotte. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private legal deliberations.
As part of the agreement, Pet¬raeus admitted that he improperly removed and retained highly sensitive information in eight personal notebooks that he gave to Broadwell. The Justice Department said the information, if disclosed, could have caused “exceptionally grave damage.” Officials said the notebooks contained code words for secret intelligence programs, the identities of covert officers, and information about war strategy and deliberative discussions with the National Security Council.
The plea agreement left some in the Justice Department angry, particularly at the FBI, and some agents have argued privately that it will hamper future efforts to secure prison terms in leak cases. But others in the government defended the deal as the only viable conclusion to a case in which a successful prosecution on the more serious charges was far from certain.
“Nobody was going to be happy with the outcome,” a former Justice Department official said. “There was nothing about this case that was typical.”
The plea agreement, while helping Petraeus avoid the prospect of prison, probably has ended whatever ambition he had to become president. It also does not protect him from further punishment — such as stripping him of a star — by the military. The Army recently recommended that Petraeus not face further punishment, but the final decision rests with Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, who is considering how to rule, according to Pentagon officials.
“I have turned the page on these matters, I am looking forward, and I will have no further comment. I resigned as CIA Director, publicly apologized for my conduct, and formally accepted responsibility,” Petraeus, 63, said in a statement. “I served my country for over 38 years, including five combat commands during my final decade in uniform. I will leave it to the public and to history to judge that record. Beyond that, I will always regret the mistakes I made, and I will always be grateful to those who have supported me.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
Following an email trail
In October 2012, Sean Joyce, the deputy director of the FBI, informed Petraeus, then CIA director, that a pair of FBI agents out of Tampa needed to come to agency headquarters to talk to him. They were investigating a cyber-stalking case.
The FBI had discovered that Broadwell had sent anonymous emails to a Tampa socialite named Jill Kelley and her husband months earlier. Kelley, who described the emails as harassing, contacted a friend who was an agent in the FBI’s Tampa field office.
The FBI became interested because the emails contained information about Petraeus’s schedule, raising concerns about a possible threat to the CIA director. As the investigation widened and Broadwell, now 43, was identified, the bureau discovered that she had also sent anonymous emails to military officials — and appeared to be involved in a romantic relationship with Petraeus.
On Oct. 26, the Tampa agents arrived at the CIA and began an interview in the director’s office on the seventh floor. The agents wanted to talk to him about Broadwell and Kelley.
Petraeus admitted the affair with Broadwell and told the agents he had lost his moral compass. He said the relationship began after he left the military.
In the interview at Langley, the FBI agents also asked the CIA director about secret PowerPoint briefings on the Afghan war that were in Broadwell’s possession. They also asked if he had provided classified information to Broadwell or facilitated her obtaining it. He denied ever doing that — a statement that later led some in the Justice Department to argue that he should be charged with lying to the FBI when it emerged that she had more sensitive material.
The interview ended after about an hour, with Petraeus realizing that his career was in jeopardy because of the affair.
He spoke with Joyce and asked if there was any way to quietly resolve the issue and avoid a scandal, according to former and current U.S. officials.
The FBI’s position was clear: The agents were going to follow the facts.
James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, learned about the investigation. Petraeus offered his resignation but said he hoped there was a way he could remain CIA director.
On Nov. 9, 2012, he stepped down.
An expanding investigation
What had first appeared to be a cyber-stalking case was rapidly expanding into a national security leak investigation as FBI agents copied the hard drive of Broadwell’s computer and found secret documents. On Nov. 12, with her consent, agents searched Broadwell’s house.
In addition, investigators discovered more than 100 photographs she had taken of highly classified information from eight bound notebooks Petraeus had kept while commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.
They also found other classified material in her possession linked to a period in 2003 when she served on a Joint Terrorism Task Force in Denver.
It eventually became clear to the FBI that Petraeus had given those journals to Broadwell as part of her research for her book; the FBI seized the journals in April 2013 after searching Petraeus’s house in Virginia.
Broadwell also recorded a conversation in which Petraeus told her that the journals contained classified information, a statement the FBI would attempt to use against him.
But there was disagreement inside the Justice Department and the FBI about whether Broadwell should be charged, with some arguing that she enjoyed protection as a journalist.
In June 2013, following harsh criticism of leak investigations targeting the news media, Holder said he would not indict any journalists for doing their jobs. Broadwell had media credentials while researching in Afghanistan, and she had written stories and op-eds in newspapers and policy journals.
Her lawyers, including Robert F. Muse, met with prosecutors in May 2014.
“We established that Paula Broadwell was a fully credentialed member of the media and entitled to all the protections under the First Amendment and DOJ policy,” Muse said. “Ultimately the government’s decision is consistent with what the attorney general told Congress and what President Obama stated: Namely, members of the media would not be prosecuted for doing their job.”
He said he had no further comment on the case.
Former and current Justice Department officials said prosecutors did give her media status.
The cyber-stalking investigation that began in Tampa was closed at the end of 2012, but prosecutors in Charlotte, where Broadwell lived, continued to examine whether Petraeus had leaked classified information and whether he had lied to the FBI.
In July 2013, Petraeus’s lawyers met with prosecutors in North Carolina who told them that there was an issue in the case involving classified information and that they would need security clearances before it could be fully discussed. Also in attendance at that meeting in Charlotte was Richard Scott, a lawyer in the counterespionage section of the Justice Department’s national security division in Washington — and Petraeus’s lawyers regarded his presence as an ominous sign.
Months of silence ensued, however, until February 2014, when the lawyers were invited back to Charlotte for a meeting with prosecutors, who planned to lay out their case — the same presentation Holder and Comey had listened to.
The prosecutors emphasized that they were pursuing felonies, not misdemeanors, including a conspiracy charge. The presentation focused in particular on the contents of the eight notebooks. Lawyers for the general learned for the first time that the Justice Department was threatening to charge Petraeus with three felonies, including “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information” under the Espionage Act.
A conviction could have sent Petraeus to prison and cost him his pension.
Slowly reaching a deal
In late April, at a meeting in Washington with prosecutors, Petraeus himself listened to the same presentation of the government’s case.
His legal team later rejected any possibility of pleading guilty to felony offenses. In July 2014 in Charlotte, Petraeus’s lawyers told prosecutors they couldn’t show that he intended to disclose classified information and pointed to Broadwell’s book, which contained none and had been personally vetted by the general. And they brought up an array of classified material that had appeared in other books and articles, including some written by Cabinet members, and had not led to prosecutions. That showed, they said, that some of the material Broadwell had obtained from Petraeus was already in the public domain.
They also said his statements to the FBI weren’t material to the investigation and didn’t impede it. And the lawyers pointed to Justice Department guidelines, which say it is not policy to charge “in situations in which a suspect, during an investigation, merely denies guilt in response to questioning by the government.”
In early February 2015, lawyers for Petraeus and the government met once again at the Bicentennial Building in the District. James Melendres, a prosecutor with the national security division, offered a deal.
For this to go away, he said, Petraeus would have to plead guilty to lying to the FBI and mishandling classified information, a misdemeanor. In the statement of facts that would accompany the plea agreement, prosecutors also said they would want to reference a message Petraeus sent to the CIA workforce in 2012 after John Kiriakou, a former agency officer, was convicted of leaking classified information.
“Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy,” Petraeus had said.
Petraeus’s lawyer, David E. Kendall, declined to comment. But another person familiar with the meeting said he described the lying charge as “a nonstarter.” The Kiriakou reference was also off the table, he said.
Scott, the national security division prosecutor, threatened to call off the talks if Kendall insisted on a no-contest plea. On this, Kendall relented.
The end came about a week later when the sides hammered out the agreement on a misdemeanor guilty plea. Petraeus, in a statement of facts, would admit that his statements to the FBI “were false.” The agreed fine was $40,000, and he accepted probation for two years.
On April 23, 2015, Petraeus pleaded guilty in Charlotte. The judge upped the fine to $100,000.
A former senior Justice Department official said it was the “cleanest” possible outcome for both sides.
Holder, who was planning to step down and didn’t want to leave the case for the next attorney general, approved the settlement. He declined to comment. But he offered this explanation for his decision at a media event last year, when asked if there was a double standard that allowed Petraeus to plead to a misdemeanor when his department had zealously pursued others for similar alleged crimes.
“There were factors that made the resolution of the case appropriate,” Holder said. “There were some unique things that existed in that case that would have made the prosecution at the felony level and a conviction at the felony level very, very, very problematic.”
Julie Tate, Craig Whitlock and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.
RUTGERS U PROFESSOR BEGS FOR MERCY AFTER CONVICTION FOR RAPING DIAPER CLAD MUTE SUFFERING FROM CEREBRAL PALSY
Anna Stubblefield, the former chair of the philosophy department at Rutgers University, wrote a long handwritten letter from jail to Judge Siobhan Teare begging for mercy because she had been motivated by love when she had sex with the disabled man
Here we have another educated idiot in academia. Anna Stubblefield, the former chair of the philosophy department at Rutgers University, was convicted of raping a diaper clad mute suffering from cerebral palsy who, it was determined, was incapable of giving consent.
On December 26, Dr. Stubblefield wrote a long handwritten letter from jail to Essex County Superior Court Judge Siobhan Teare, begging for mercy because she had been motivated by love when she had sex with the disabled man. She claimed their “romantic relationship was consensual and mutually loving.”
The professor’s letter failed to impress Judge Teare because on Friday he sentenced the educated idiot to a 12-year term in prison.
Dr. Stubblefield will enjoy ample opportunities to find mutually loving romantic relationships with her fellow prison inmates.
‘IT WAS MOTIVATED BY LOVE’: PROFESSOR’S BEGGING LETTER TO JUDGE WHO JAILED HER FOR SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH A DIAPER CLAD MAN WITH CEREBRAL PALSY WHO COULD NOT SPEAK
In the letter, Anna Stubblefield claimed their ‘romantic relationship was consensual and mutually loving’
By Julian Robinson
Daily Mail
January 25, 2016
A professor convicted of sexually assaulting a disabled man wrote a begging letter to a judge insisting she had only been acting out of love.
Anna Stubblefield, the former chair of the philosophy department at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, was jailed for 12 years over her relationship with the 35-year-old man who has cerebral palsy and is unable to speak.
The 46-year-old, who was accused of using her position to take advantage of the man, known as DJ, said he had consented to the relationship by communicating on a keyboard.
In a letter she wrote from the Essex County Correctional Facility, she told Superior Court Judge Siobhan Teare that her actions 'were motivated by love, and my love was grounded in my belief in (the disabled man's) intelligence and humanity'.
The December 26 note, obtained by NJ Advance Media, was sent to the judge prior to sentencing and stated the same arguments she had used while giving evidence during her trial.
'I believed that he and I were intellectual equals and that our romantic relationship was consensual and mutually loving.'
She added that she was 'raised by parents who are committed to the cause of equal rights for people with disabilities'.
Stubblefield wrote that she originally saw the man as a friend but that 'then something happened that took me by surprise – we fell in love.'
She said she would have 'waited' had she foreseen his family's negative reaction to the relationship.
Stubblefield added: 'I regret and sincerely apologize for the distress my actions have caused to his family.'
On her release, Stubblefield will be on supervised parole for the rest of her life and will be required to register as a sex offender.
The tense and emotional sentencing hearing earlier this month included testimony from the victim's brother and Stubblefield's daughter. Stubblefield's daughter was later removed from the courtroom by officers after cursing at the brother.
Stubblefield met the 35-year-old man in 2009 through his brother, who had been taking her course. Over the next two years, Stubblefield worked with the man using a method known as facilitated communication. She argued that although he could not speak, he could communicate by typing.
She said the two were in love and they revealed their sexual relationship to his mother and brother in 2011.
Prosecutors challenged the method of facilitated communication, and psychologists determined that he was mentally incompetent and couldn't consent to sexual activity.
The judge barred expert testimony on facilitated communication, determining it's 'not a recognized science.'
She was put on trial after being accused of raping the mute, diaper-wearing man in her office in Newark, New Jersey in 2011.
The philosophy professor testified in her own defense last month that she and the man, known to the court only as DJ, were in a consensual relationship and 'in love'.
DJ, who is unable to speak, needs help eating and walking and is forced to wear diapers, is intellectually disabled, according to his mother and brother who act as his legal guardians.
In Stubblefield's written explanation of her sexual interactions with DJ, she wrote he had 'he lowered himself off the bed on to the floor and scooted out the door down the hall to the front room'.
The prosecutor said DJ uses 'scooting' as a method of communication, to get to the fridge if he is hungry or to the sink if he is thirsty. Plant suggested DJ used 'scooting' during the sexual interaction with Stubblefield in order to get away.
'He did not understand what was going on, did not have the ability other than to scoot out,' Plant said.
During the trial the prosecution had questioned how DJ could communicate if he wanted to stop during another sexual incident on the floor of Stubblefield's Newark office. Stubblefield said he could bang on the floor.
Stubblefield, who plans to appeal her conviction, had faced a maximum prison sentence of 40 years on Friday. Prosecutors asked for a 15-year sentence, while her lawyer asked for probation.
Here we have another educated idiot in academia. Anna Stubblefield, the former chair of the philosophy department at Rutgers University, was convicted of raping a diaper clad mute suffering from cerebral palsy who, it was determined, was incapable of giving consent.
On December 26, Dr. Stubblefield wrote a long handwritten letter from jail to Essex County Superior Court Judge Siobhan Teare, begging for mercy because she had been motivated by love when she had sex with the disabled man. She claimed their “romantic relationship was consensual and mutually loving.”
The professor’s letter failed to impress Judge Teare because on Friday he sentenced the educated idiot to a 12-year term in prison.
Dr. Stubblefield will enjoy ample opportunities to find mutually loving romantic relationships with her fellow prison inmates.
‘IT WAS MOTIVATED BY LOVE’: PROFESSOR’S BEGGING LETTER TO JUDGE WHO JAILED HER FOR SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH A DIAPER CLAD MAN WITH CEREBRAL PALSY WHO COULD NOT SPEAK
In the letter, Anna Stubblefield claimed their ‘romantic relationship was consensual and mutually loving’
By Julian Robinson
Daily Mail
January 25, 2016
A professor convicted of sexually assaulting a disabled man wrote a begging letter to a judge insisting she had only been acting out of love.
Anna Stubblefield, the former chair of the philosophy department at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, was jailed for 12 years over her relationship with the 35-year-old man who has cerebral palsy and is unable to speak.
The 46-year-old, who was accused of using her position to take advantage of the man, known as DJ, said he had consented to the relationship by communicating on a keyboard.
In a letter she wrote from the Essex County Correctional Facility, she told Superior Court Judge Siobhan Teare that her actions 'were motivated by love, and my love was grounded in my belief in (the disabled man's) intelligence and humanity'.
The December 26 note, obtained by NJ Advance Media, was sent to the judge prior to sentencing and stated the same arguments she had used while giving evidence during her trial.
'I believed that he and I were intellectual equals and that our romantic relationship was consensual and mutually loving.'
She added that she was 'raised by parents who are committed to the cause of equal rights for people with disabilities'.
Stubblefield wrote that she originally saw the man as a friend but that 'then something happened that took me by surprise – we fell in love.'
She said she would have 'waited' had she foreseen his family's negative reaction to the relationship.
Stubblefield added: 'I regret and sincerely apologize for the distress my actions have caused to his family.'
On her release, Stubblefield will be on supervised parole for the rest of her life and will be required to register as a sex offender.
The tense and emotional sentencing hearing earlier this month included testimony from the victim's brother and Stubblefield's daughter. Stubblefield's daughter was later removed from the courtroom by officers after cursing at the brother.
Stubblefield met the 35-year-old man in 2009 through his brother, who had been taking her course. Over the next two years, Stubblefield worked with the man using a method known as facilitated communication. She argued that although he could not speak, he could communicate by typing.
She said the two were in love and they revealed their sexual relationship to his mother and brother in 2011.
Prosecutors challenged the method of facilitated communication, and psychologists determined that he was mentally incompetent and couldn't consent to sexual activity.
The judge barred expert testimony on facilitated communication, determining it's 'not a recognized science.'
She was put on trial after being accused of raping the mute, diaper-wearing man in her office in Newark, New Jersey in 2011.
The philosophy professor testified in her own defense last month that she and the man, known to the court only as DJ, were in a consensual relationship and 'in love'.
DJ, who is unable to speak, needs help eating and walking and is forced to wear diapers, is intellectually disabled, according to his mother and brother who act as his legal guardians.
In Stubblefield's written explanation of her sexual interactions with DJ, she wrote he had 'he lowered himself off the bed on to the floor and scooted out the door down the hall to the front room'.
The prosecutor said DJ uses 'scooting' as a method of communication, to get to the fridge if he is hungry or to the sink if he is thirsty. Plant suggested DJ used 'scooting' during the sexual interaction with Stubblefield in order to get away.
'He did not understand what was going on, did not have the ability other than to scoot out,' Plant said.
During the trial the prosecution had questioned how DJ could communicate if he wanted to stop during another sexual incident on the floor of Stubblefield's Newark office. Stubblefield said he could bang on the floor.
Stubblefield, who plans to appeal her conviction, had faced a maximum prison sentence of 40 years on Friday. Prosecutors asked for a 15-year sentence, while her lawyer asked for probation.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
BILL AIMS TO PROTECT NEW MEXICO POLICE OFFICERS
By Ryan Boetel
Albuquerque Journal
January 10, 2016
ALBUQERQUE, New Mexico -- Several New Mexico House Republicans and Albuquerque Police Chief Gorden Eden called for support of a bill that would reform the state's "three strikes law" and another that would add law enforcement officers as a protected class in the New Mexico Hate Crimes Act.
The request was made at Albuquerque police headquarters on Saturday morning. After the news conference, Reps. Nate Gentry, R-Albuquerque, and Jim Smith, R-Sandia Park, joined Albuquerque officers on their patrol. Eden has invited all legislators to ride along with on-duty police officers as the lawmakers prepare to start the upcoming 30-day legislative session, where several law enforcement- and criminal justice-related bills are set to be discussed.
Gentry and Rep. Paul Pacheco, R-Albuquerque, introduced House Bill 95, which would make it a hate crime to commit crimes against officers just because of their profession.
"With all this anti-police rhetoric, I think it's appropriate to apply (hate crimes laws) to law enforcement," said Gentry. "We've seen anti-police rhetoric that, in my mind, we need to help discourage."
He said the hate crime law could potentially be applied to people arrested for crimes during a protest against police, but prosecutors would have to prove the person was motivated by hate to commit a crime against an officer. He added that it wouldn't apply to someone who, for example, "got too rowdy" at a protest and threw a bottle.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico is opposed to the bill.
"The criminal act is what we should punish," ACLU spokesman Micah McCoy said in an interview on Saturday. "Not what may or may not be in someone's head."
Currently under the state's hate crimes laws, prosecutors can seek sentencing enhancements for attacks on minorities, the elderly and the dis- abled, and attacks motivated by a person's race, sexual orientation, disability, gender, age or ancestry.
At least one Democratic representative has questioned the idea of making police officers a protected class, according to previous news reports.
But Eden said the bill would make officers safer.
"We definitely need that layer of protection for our officers," Eden said on Saturday. "One of the things that good legislation does is prevent things from happening."
Pacheco is also sponsoring House Bill 56 that would modify the state's "three strikes law" to enhance the sentences of repeat violent offenders. The bill would call for a life sentence for anyone convicted of certain types of violent felonies in three separate cases.
A former Albuquerque officer himself, Pacheco pointed out that both Albuquerque police officer Daniel Webster and Rio Rancho police officer Gregg Benner were shot and killed by men with criminal histories.
During the previous legislative session, Matthew Coyte, the president of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Bar, said such laws would take judicial discretion out of the sentencing process. He said mandatory minimums have failed elsewhere in America.
Some Democrats who have weighed changes to the state's criminal code have said there are better ways to improve the state's criminal justice system, according to past Journal news reports.
EDITOR’S NOTE: To me, this looks like nothing more than feel good (for cops) legislation. In cases other than the ambush of police officers, it will be hard to prove an assault was committed out of hatred for the police. In ambushes, the perpetrator hopes to get away with murdering a cop, but he knows he will be charged with capital murder if captured alive. He also knows that the penalty for capital murder cannot be enhanced – it’s either death or life in prison - so the prospect of being charged with committing a hate crime will not deter him from ambushing a police officer.
Albuquerque Journal
January 10, 2016
ALBUQERQUE, New Mexico -- Several New Mexico House Republicans and Albuquerque Police Chief Gorden Eden called for support of a bill that would reform the state's "three strikes law" and another that would add law enforcement officers as a protected class in the New Mexico Hate Crimes Act.
The request was made at Albuquerque police headquarters on Saturday morning. After the news conference, Reps. Nate Gentry, R-Albuquerque, and Jim Smith, R-Sandia Park, joined Albuquerque officers on their patrol. Eden has invited all legislators to ride along with on-duty police officers as the lawmakers prepare to start the upcoming 30-day legislative session, where several law enforcement- and criminal justice-related bills are set to be discussed.
Gentry and Rep. Paul Pacheco, R-Albuquerque, introduced House Bill 95, which would make it a hate crime to commit crimes against officers just because of their profession.
"With all this anti-police rhetoric, I think it's appropriate to apply (hate crimes laws) to law enforcement," said Gentry. "We've seen anti-police rhetoric that, in my mind, we need to help discourage."
He said the hate crime law could potentially be applied to people arrested for crimes during a protest against police, but prosecutors would have to prove the person was motivated by hate to commit a crime against an officer. He added that it wouldn't apply to someone who, for example, "got too rowdy" at a protest and threw a bottle.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico is opposed to the bill.
"The criminal act is what we should punish," ACLU spokesman Micah McCoy said in an interview on Saturday. "Not what may or may not be in someone's head."
Currently under the state's hate crimes laws, prosecutors can seek sentencing enhancements for attacks on minorities, the elderly and the dis- abled, and attacks motivated by a person's race, sexual orientation, disability, gender, age or ancestry.
At least one Democratic representative has questioned the idea of making police officers a protected class, according to previous news reports.
But Eden said the bill would make officers safer.
"We definitely need that layer of protection for our officers," Eden said on Saturday. "One of the things that good legislation does is prevent things from happening."
Pacheco is also sponsoring House Bill 56 that would modify the state's "three strikes law" to enhance the sentences of repeat violent offenders. The bill would call for a life sentence for anyone convicted of certain types of violent felonies in three separate cases.
A former Albuquerque officer himself, Pacheco pointed out that both Albuquerque police officer Daniel Webster and Rio Rancho police officer Gregg Benner were shot and killed by men with criminal histories.
During the previous legislative session, Matthew Coyte, the president of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Bar, said such laws would take judicial discretion out of the sentencing process. He said mandatory minimums have failed elsewhere in America.
Some Democrats who have weighed changes to the state's criminal code have said there are better ways to improve the state's criminal justice system, according to past Journal news reports.
EDITOR’S NOTE: To me, this looks like nothing more than feel good (for cops) legislation. In cases other than the ambush of police officers, it will be hard to prove an assault was committed out of hatred for the police. In ambushes, the perpetrator hopes to get away with murdering a cop, but he knows he will be charged with capital murder if captured alive. He also knows that the penalty for capital murder cannot be enhanced – it’s either death or life in prison - so the prospect of being charged with committing a hate crime will not deter him from ambushing a police officer.
WHY LA POLICE UNION BLAMES LAPD CHIEF BECK FOR SURGE IN VIOLENT CRIME
Among several blunders that have taken officers away from patrol duties, Chief Beck’s new Community Relations Division is being referred to by the rank and file as completely dysfunctional and a complete waste of taxpayers’ dollars
By Caroline Aguirre
City Watch
January 25, 2016
LAPD INSIDER--On January 20 the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) held a news conference where the Unions president Craig Lally and members of the Board of Directors denounced Chief's Beck current deployment of police officers within all of the police divisions throughout the city of Los Angeles.
The union officials stated that there are “dangerously low police patrol staffing levels that are endangering the lives of residents, visitors, business and police officers in Los Angeles”.
This they believe has played a major role in the increase in both violent crime (murders) increased gang violence and property related crimes.
The union has called on Los Angeles city councilman Mitch Englander, who chairs the City’s Public Safety Committee, to call for a public hearing and for Chief Beck to address the above noted concerns.
Englander stated that on Friday he would make a formal motion before all council members.
Union officials (which represent rank and file members) also stated that they have “lost all
confidence '' in Beck's ability to lead the LAPD.
How can we not remember when Caspar the Friendly Ghost was patrolling the streets in Northeast Los Angeles?
Both Chief Beck and Mayor Garcetti, for an extended period of time, refused to acknowledge that there was a major increase in murders, aggravated assaults, other violent crimes and also property related crimes within the city of Los Angeles. It was excellent investigative reporting by the LA Times that disclosed the true and accurate crime statistics.
Chief's Beck response to the increase in violent crime was to increase the amount of police officers assigned to the elite Metro Unit to 200 officers. Where did these police officers come from? They were recruited from various police divisions which resulted in the decrease of patrol officers within those divisions.
This is not to say that these officers assigned to the Metro unit don't do a good job; however they are deployed to hot bed areas within the city only after a series of violent crimes has taken place. It is not like each of their marked patrol vehicles has an attached Crystal Ball where they can predict the next location of crime. These Metro patrol units can be redeployed at any time when other area's within the city become hot beds.
More recently Chief Beck established the new Community Relations Division (CRD). This new established unit is being referred to as completely dysfunctional and a complete waste of taxpayers’ dollars by rank and file members.
Sources stated that Beck allocated one million taxpayers’ dollars for this new division. As with the Metro unit police officers were recruited from various police divisions which resulted in yet more vacant patrol positions. It is unclear what the true goals are with CRD.
It can be stated that they are also referred to as the TWEET Division. The police officers assigned to CRD attend police sponsored functions at various police divisions where they take photos of the event and then tweet them off to Lord knows who.
CRD wants to gain credit where credit has not been earned. Example in point: recently CRD officers went to various businesses in the Hollenbeck area. They took photos with community business owners and managers and then left the immediate area to return to their office.
Initially they were assigned to assist the Hollenbeck division Senior Lead officers with walking foot patrols. Is taking photographs part of their foot patrol responsibilities?
Now the Captain in charge of this new Community Relations Division has requested an additional 70 officers as noted in her 2016-2017 budget request. This would cause even more police officers to be removed from various police divisions.
This type of irresponsible decision making on Chief Beck's part will only continue to endanger our communities, increase violent crime rates even higher and place our residents and police officers in harms way.
Now these police officers assigned to CRD want a pay grade increase to that of patrol officers who Protect and Serve our communities each and every day because they feel photo ops within the community are equal to doing old fashioned police patrol work. I might add that these officers are not protecting the welfare and safety of our community and their peers.
The police union also noted that there are more than two hundred police officers doing clerical duties. It is time that the city of Los Angeles hire people to fill these clerical positions and then reassign these sworn police officers to various police divisions to do the job they were trained to do.
Another concern raised by the police union was the fact that LAPD needs to provide training for individuals who want to become civilian jailers. This would allow 60-70 sworn police officers currently assigned to LAPD jail divisions to return to various police divisions to patrol the streets of the city of Los Angeles.
Now is the time for residents, stakeholders and taxpayers to demand that Chief Beck immediately deploy more police officers to each and every police division within the city of Los Angeles to ensure that there are adequate staffing levels to patrol all of the streets within our city 7 days a week twenty- four hours a day.
(Caroline Aguirre is a retired California parole officer and current community activist and neighborhood watch captain.)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Charlie Beck is no Bill Parker. Chief Parker (1950-66), one of America’s premier police administrators, was never politically correct, while Beck clearly is. Maybe that was because at the time, Parker could not be fired.. Beck seems to be playing to Obama’s view of what policing should be like.
As for cops doing clerical work … not under Parker. When Bill was chief, LAPD became noted for using civilians to do the clerical work. The only cops doing clerical work were those supervising the civilians and a few officers who for one reason or another were unable to work the streets.
Ed Davis (1969-78) was another no-nonsense politically incorrect L.A. police chief. After Davis, the police chiefs of Los Angeles became politicized, which in some cases may be good, but for the most part it is not.
By Caroline Aguirre
City Watch
January 25, 2016
LAPD INSIDER--On January 20 the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) held a news conference where the Unions president Craig Lally and members of the Board of Directors denounced Chief's Beck current deployment of police officers within all of the police divisions throughout the city of Los Angeles.
The union officials stated that there are “dangerously low police patrol staffing levels that are endangering the lives of residents, visitors, business and police officers in Los Angeles”.
This they believe has played a major role in the increase in both violent crime (murders) increased gang violence and property related crimes.
The union has called on Los Angeles city councilman Mitch Englander, who chairs the City’s Public Safety Committee, to call for a public hearing and for Chief Beck to address the above noted concerns.
Englander stated that on Friday he would make a formal motion before all council members.
Union officials (which represent rank and file members) also stated that they have “lost all
confidence '' in Beck's ability to lead the LAPD.
How can we not remember when Caspar the Friendly Ghost was patrolling the streets in Northeast Los Angeles?
Both Chief Beck and Mayor Garcetti, for an extended period of time, refused to acknowledge that there was a major increase in murders, aggravated assaults, other violent crimes and also property related crimes within the city of Los Angeles. It was excellent investigative reporting by the LA Times that disclosed the true and accurate crime statistics.
Chief's Beck response to the increase in violent crime was to increase the amount of police officers assigned to the elite Metro Unit to 200 officers. Where did these police officers come from? They were recruited from various police divisions which resulted in the decrease of patrol officers within those divisions.
This is not to say that these officers assigned to the Metro unit don't do a good job; however they are deployed to hot bed areas within the city only after a series of violent crimes has taken place. It is not like each of their marked patrol vehicles has an attached Crystal Ball where they can predict the next location of crime. These Metro patrol units can be redeployed at any time when other area's within the city become hot beds.
More recently Chief Beck established the new Community Relations Division (CRD). This new established unit is being referred to as completely dysfunctional and a complete waste of taxpayers’ dollars by rank and file members.
Sources stated that Beck allocated one million taxpayers’ dollars for this new division. As with the Metro unit police officers were recruited from various police divisions which resulted in yet more vacant patrol positions. It is unclear what the true goals are with CRD.
It can be stated that they are also referred to as the TWEET Division. The police officers assigned to CRD attend police sponsored functions at various police divisions where they take photos of the event and then tweet them off to Lord knows who.
CRD wants to gain credit where credit has not been earned. Example in point: recently CRD officers went to various businesses in the Hollenbeck area. They took photos with community business owners and managers and then left the immediate area to return to their office.
Initially they were assigned to assist the Hollenbeck division Senior Lead officers with walking foot patrols. Is taking photographs part of their foot patrol responsibilities?
Now the Captain in charge of this new Community Relations Division has requested an additional 70 officers as noted in her 2016-2017 budget request. This would cause even more police officers to be removed from various police divisions.
This type of irresponsible decision making on Chief Beck's part will only continue to endanger our communities, increase violent crime rates even higher and place our residents and police officers in harms way.
Now these police officers assigned to CRD want a pay grade increase to that of patrol officers who Protect and Serve our communities each and every day because they feel photo ops within the community are equal to doing old fashioned police patrol work. I might add that these officers are not protecting the welfare and safety of our community and their peers.
The police union also noted that there are more than two hundred police officers doing clerical duties. It is time that the city of Los Angeles hire people to fill these clerical positions and then reassign these sworn police officers to various police divisions to do the job they were trained to do.
Another concern raised by the police union was the fact that LAPD needs to provide training for individuals who want to become civilian jailers. This would allow 60-70 sworn police officers currently assigned to LAPD jail divisions to return to various police divisions to patrol the streets of the city of Los Angeles.
Now is the time for residents, stakeholders and taxpayers to demand that Chief Beck immediately deploy more police officers to each and every police division within the city of Los Angeles to ensure that there are adequate staffing levels to patrol all of the streets within our city 7 days a week twenty- four hours a day.
(Caroline Aguirre is a retired California parole officer and current community activist and neighborhood watch captain.)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Charlie Beck is no Bill Parker. Chief Parker (1950-66), one of America’s premier police administrators, was never politically correct, while Beck clearly is. Maybe that was because at the time, Parker could not be fired.. Beck seems to be playing to Obama’s view of what policing should be like.
As for cops doing clerical work … not under Parker. When Bill was chief, LAPD became noted for using civilians to do the clerical work. The only cops doing clerical work were those supervising the civilians and a few officers who for one reason or another were unable to work the streets.
Ed Davis (1969-78) was another no-nonsense politically incorrect L.A. police chief. After Davis, the police chiefs of Los Angeles became politicized, which in some cases may be good, but for the most part it is not.
FBI RAN WEBSITE SHARING THOUSANDS OF CHILD PORN IMAGES
By Brad Heath
USA TODAY
January 21, 2016
WASHINGTON — For nearly two weeks last year, the FBI operated what it described as one of the Internet’s largest child pornography websites, allowing users to download thousands of illicit images and videos from a government site in the Washington suburbs.
The operation — whose details remain largely secret — was at least the third time in recent years that FBI agents took control of a child pornography site but left it online in an attempt to catch users who officials said would otherwise remain hidden behind an encrypted and anonymous computer network. In each case, the FBI infected the sites with software that punctured that security, allowing agents to identify hundreds of users.
The Justice Department acknowledged in court filings that the FBI operated the site, known as Playpen, from Feb. 20 to March 4, 2015. At the time, the site had more than 215,000 registered users and included links to more than 23,000 sexually explicit images and videos of children, including more than 9,000 files that users could download directly from the FBI. Some of the images described in court filings involved children barely old enough for kindergarten.
That approach is a significant departure from the government’s past tactics for battling online child porn, in which agents were instructed that they should not allow images of children being sexually assaulted to become public. The Justice Department has said that children depicted in such images are harmed each time they are viewed, and once those images leave the government’s control, agents have no way to prevent them from being copied and re-copied to other parts of the internet.
Officials acknowledged those risks, but said they had no other way to identify the people accessing the sites.
“We had a window of opportunity to get into one of the darkest places on Earth, and not a lot of other options except to not do it,” said Ron Hosko, a former senior FBI official who was involved in planning one of the agency’s first efforts to take over a child porn site. “There was no other way we could identify as many players.
Lawyers for child pornography victims expressed surprise that the FBI would agree to such tactics – in part because agents had rejected them in the past – but nonetheless said they approved. “These are places where people know exactly what they’re getting when they arrive,” said James Marsh, who represents some of the children depicted in some of the most widely-circulated images. “It’s not like they’re blasting it out to the world.”
The FBI hacks have drawn repeated – though so far unsuccessful – legal challenges, largely centered on the search warrants agents obtained before agents cracked the computer network.
But they have also prompted a backlash of a different kind. In a court filing, a lawyer for one of the men arrested after the FBI sting charged that “what the government did in this case is comparable to flooding a neighborhood with heroin in the hope of snatching an assortment of low-level drug users.” The defense lawyer, Colin Fieman, asked a federal judge to throw out child pornography charges against his client, former middle school teacher Jay Michaud. A federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments on that request Friday.
Federal agents first noticed Playpen not long after it went online in August, 2014. The site was buried in what is often called the “dark web,” a part of the internet that is accessible to the public only through Tor, network software that bounces users’ internet traffic from one computer to another to make it largely untraceable.
By March of last year, the FBI said, Playpen had grown to become “the largest remaining known child pornography hidden service in the world,” the Justice Department said in a court filing. FBI agents tracked the site to computer servers in North Carolina, and in February seized the site and quietly moved it to its own facility in Newington, Va.
The FBI kept Playpen online for 13 days. During that time, federal prosecutors told defense lawyers that the site included more than 23,000 sexually explicit images and videos of children. Some of those could be downloaded directly from the government’s computers; others were available through links to other hard-to-find locations on the web, Fieman said.
One section of the site was labeled “toddlers,” according to court records. And prosecutors said that some of the images users accessed during the time Playpen was under the government’s control included “prepubescent female” having sexual intercourse with adults.
Fieman said more than 100,000 Playpen registered users visited the site while it was under the FBI’s control. The Justice Department said in court filings that agents had found “true” computer addresses for more than 1,300 of them, and has told defense lawyers that 137 have been charged with a crime, though it has so far declined to publicly identify those cases.
Law enforcement has long complained that online services like Tor create a type of safe haven for criminals because they hide the unique network addresses from which people connect to sites on the internet. Officials said the only way for the government to crack that network was to take over the site and infect it with malware that would trick users’ web browsers into revealing their real internet addresses, which agents could then trace back to the people who were using them.
“The government always considers seizing an illegal child pornography site and removing it from existence immediately and permanently,” Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said. “While doing so would end the trafficking of child pornography taking place on that one website, it would do nothing to prevent those same users from disseminating child pornography through other means.”
Still, he said, “The decision whether to simply shut down a website or to allow it to continue operating for a brief period for a law enforcement purpose is a difficult one.”
Justice officials said they were unable to discuss details of the investigation because much of it remains under seal, at their request.
The Justice Department said in court filings that agents did not post any child pornography to the site themselves. But it did not dispute that the agents allowed images that were already on the site to remain there, and that it did not block the site’s users from uploading new ones while it was under the government’s control. And the FBI has not said it had any ability to prevent users from circulating the material they downloaded onto other sites.
“At some point, the government investigation becomes indistinguishable from the crime, and we should ask whether that’s OK,” said Elizabeth Joh, a University of California Davis law professor who has studied undercover investigations. “What’s crazy about it is who’s making the cost/benefit analysis on this? Who decides that this is the best method of identifying these people?”
The FBI was first known to have operated a child porn site in 2012, when agents seized control of three sites from their operator in Nebraska. FBI Special Agent Jeff Tarpinian testified that the government “relocated two servers to an FBI facility here in Omaha and we continued to let those child pornography run – websites operate for a short period of time."
That case led to federal child pornography charges against at least 25 people. But in an illustration of how difficult the cases can be, at least nine of the people charged in those cases are still identified in court records only as “John Doe,” suggesting the FBI has so far been unable to link specific people to the network addresses it logged.
The next year, the FBI took control of a dark web site known as Freedom Hosting. The man prosecutors have accused of operating that site, Eric Marques, is due to be extradited to the United States; the charges against him remain sealed. The FBI revealed its role in an Irish court hearing covered by local media.
In each case, the FBI injected the site with malware to crack Tor’s anonymity.
Those hacks, developed with the help of outside contractors, were a technical milestone. When the FBI first realized it could break through Tor, Hosko said the agency gathered counterterrorism investigators and intelligence agencies to see if any of them had a more pressing need for the software. “It was this, exponentially,” Hosko said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Holy Shit! First the ATF supplies the Mexican drug cartels with guns and now the FBI disseminates child pornography. What’s next?
And will anyone with the FBI get prosecuted for distributing thousands of child pornography images? Very likely not. But a citizen can get busted for possession of child pornography if he had just one child porn image on his personal computer.
USA TODAY
January 21, 2016
WASHINGTON — For nearly two weeks last year, the FBI operated what it described as one of the Internet’s largest child pornography websites, allowing users to download thousands of illicit images and videos from a government site in the Washington suburbs.
The operation — whose details remain largely secret — was at least the third time in recent years that FBI agents took control of a child pornography site but left it online in an attempt to catch users who officials said would otherwise remain hidden behind an encrypted and anonymous computer network. In each case, the FBI infected the sites with software that punctured that security, allowing agents to identify hundreds of users.
The Justice Department acknowledged in court filings that the FBI operated the site, known as Playpen, from Feb. 20 to March 4, 2015. At the time, the site had more than 215,000 registered users and included links to more than 23,000 sexually explicit images and videos of children, including more than 9,000 files that users could download directly from the FBI. Some of the images described in court filings involved children barely old enough for kindergarten.
That approach is a significant departure from the government’s past tactics for battling online child porn, in which agents were instructed that they should not allow images of children being sexually assaulted to become public. The Justice Department has said that children depicted in such images are harmed each time they are viewed, and once those images leave the government’s control, agents have no way to prevent them from being copied and re-copied to other parts of the internet.
Officials acknowledged those risks, but said they had no other way to identify the people accessing the sites.
“We had a window of opportunity to get into one of the darkest places on Earth, and not a lot of other options except to not do it,” said Ron Hosko, a former senior FBI official who was involved in planning one of the agency’s first efforts to take over a child porn site. “There was no other way we could identify as many players.
Lawyers for child pornography victims expressed surprise that the FBI would agree to such tactics – in part because agents had rejected them in the past – but nonetheless said they approved. “These are places where people know exactly what they’re getting when they arrive,” said James Marsh, who represents some of the children depicted in some of the most widely-circulated images. “It’s not like they’re blasting it out to the world.”
The FBI hacks have drawn repeated – though so far unsuccessful – legal challenges, largely centered on the search warrants agents obtained before agents cracked the computer network.
But they have also prompted a backlash of a different kind. In a court filing, a lawyer for one of the men arrested after the FBI sting charged that “what the government did in this case is comparable to flooding a neighborhood with heroin in the hope of snatching an assortment of low-level drug users.” The defense lawyer, Colin Fieman, asked a federal judge to throw out child pornography charges against his client, former middle school teacher Jay Michaud. A federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments on that request Friday.
Federal agents first noticed Playpen not long after it went online in August, 2014. The site was buried in what is often called the “dark web,” a part of the internet that is accessible to the public only through Tor, network software that bounces users’ internet traffic from one computer to another to make it largely untraceable.
By March of last year, the FBI said, Playpen had grown to become “the largest remaining known child pornography hidden service in the world,” the Justice Department said in a court filing. FBI agents tracked the site to computer servers in North Carolina, and in February seized the site and quietly moved it to its own facility in Newington, Va.
The FBI kept Playpen online for 13 days. During that time, federal prosecutors told defense lawyers that the site included more than 23,000 sexually explicit images and videos of children. Some of those could be downloaded directly from the government’s computers; others were available through links to other hard-to-find locations on the web, Fieman said.
One section of the site was labeled “toddlers,” according to court records. And prosecutors said that some of the images users accessed during the time Playpen was under the government’s control included “prepubescent female” having sexual intercourse with adults.
Fieman said more than 100,000 Playpen registered users visited the site while it was under the FBI’s control. The Justice Department said in court filings that agents had found “true” computer addresses for more than 1,300 of them, and has told defense lawyers that 137 have been charged with a crime, though it has so far declined to publicly identify those cases.
Law enforcement has long complained that online services like Tor create a type of safe haven for criminals because they hide the unique network addresses from which people connect to sites on the internet. Officials said the only way for the government to crack that network was to take over the site and infect it with malware that would trick users’ web browsers into revealing their real internet addresses, which agents could then trace back to the people who were using them.
“The government always considers seizing an illegal child pornography site and removing it from existence immediately and permanently,” Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said. “While doing so would end the trafficking of child pornography taking place on that one website, it would do nothing to prevent those same users from disseminating child pornography through other means.”
Still, he said, “The decision whether to simply shut down a website or to allow it to continue operating for a brief period for a law enforcement purpose is a difficult one.”
Justice officials said they were unable to discuss details of the investigation because much of it remains under seal, at their request.
The Justice Department said in court filings that agents did not post any child pornography to the site themselves. But it did not dispute that the agents allowed images that were already on the site to remain there, and that it did not block the site’s users from uploading new ones while it was under the government’s control. And the FBI has not said it had any ability to prevent users from circulating the material they downloaded onto other sites.
“At some point, the government investigation becomes indistinguishable from the crime, and we should ask whether that’s OK,” said Elizabeth Joh, a University of California Davis law professor who has studied undercover investigations. “What’s crazy about it is who’s making the cost/benefit analysis on this? Who decides that this is the best method of identifying these people?”
The FBI was first known to have operated a child porn site in 2012, when agents seized control of three sites from their operator in Nebraska. FBI Special Agent Jeff Tarpinian testified that the government “relocated two servers to an FBI facility here in Omaha and we continued to let those child pornography run – websites operate for a short period of time."
That case led to federal child pornography charges against at least 25 people. But in an illustration of how difficult the cases can be, at least nine of the people charged in those cases are still identified in court records only as “John Doe,” suggesting the FBI has so far been unable to link specific people to the network addresses it logged.
The next year, the FBI took control of a dark web site known as Freedom Hosting. The man prosecutors have accused of operating that site, Eric Marques, is due to be extradited to the United States; the charges against him remain sealed. The FBI revealed its role in an Irish court hearing covered by local media.
In each case, the FBI injected the site with malware to crack Tor’s anonymity.
Those hacks, developed with the help of outside contractors, were a technical milestone. When the FBI first realized it could break through Tor, Hosko said the agency gathered counterterrorism investigators and intelligence agencies to see if any of them had a more pressing need for the software. “It was this, exponentially,” Hosko said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Holy Shit! First the ATF supplies the Mexican drug cartels with guns and now the FBI disseminates child pornography. What’s next?
And will anyone with the FBI get prosecuted for distributing thousands of child pornography images? Very likely not. But a citizen can get busted for possession of child pornography if he had just one child porn image on his personal computer.
WHEN TEACHERS FUCK UP, SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS TAKE COVER BEHIND ‘STUDENTS’ RIGHTS TO COIDENTIALITY’
Even after a teacher’s or school administration fuck-up has been widely circulated by the media, the only comment that will be released by the school administration is that they cannot comment on the matter because of the student’s rights to privacy
Time after time I have read or seen on TV reports where teachers or school administrations have fucked up in disciplining students. Even after the reports have been widely circulated by the media, the only comment that will be released by the school administration is that they cannot comment on the matter because of the “students’ rights to confidentiality.” Thus school administrations are able to take cover behind a student’s rights to privacy.
Here is the perfect example of a school administration cover-up of a teacher’s and administration fuck-up in the Killeen Independent School District. Killeen, Texas is where Fort Hood is located.
The report was broadcast by TV stations and widely circulated throughout the U.S. and even overseas. And yet the school superintendent only released a gobbledygook no comment statement.
TEXAS EIGHTH-GRADER SUSPENDED FOR RESCUING CLASSMATE DURING ASTHMA ATTACK
Anthony Ruelas was suspended from middle school for helping an asthmatic classmate get to the nurse
By Peter Holley
The Washington Post
January 25, 2016
Anthony Ruelas watched for what seemed like an eternity as his classmate wheezed and gagged in a desperate struggle to breathe.
The girl told classmates that she was having an asthma attack, but her teacher refused to let anyone leave the classroom, according to NBC affiliate KCEN. Instead, the teacher emailed the school nurse and waited for a reply, telling students to stay calm and remain in their seats.
When the girl fell out of her chair several minutes later, Ruelas decided he couldn’t take it anymore and took action.
“We ain’t got time to wait for no email from the nurse,” a teacher’s report quotes him as saying, according to Fox News Latino.
And with that, the 15-year-old Gateway Middle School student carried his stricken classmate to the nurse’s office, violating his teacher’s orders.
The teenager later texted Ruelas to let him know she was fine, according to KWTX, but that didn’t stop officials at the alternative school in the Killeen Independent School District from punishing him: Ruelas was written up by his teacher and eventually suspended for two days, according to KCEN.
“I was like what?” Ruelas told the station. “I’m suspended for this? Like, I was trying to help her.”
A teacher’s report documenting the incident appears to correspond with Ruelas’s version of what transpired:
“During 5th period another student complained that she couldn’t breathe and was having an asthma attack,” the report states. “As I waited for a response from the nurse, the student fell out of her chair to the floor. Anthony proceeded to go over and pick her up, saying ‘f— that, we ain’t got time to wait for no email from the nurse.’ He walks out of class and carries the other student to the nurse.”
Mandy Cortes, Ruelas’s mother, told KCEN that she assumed her son — who has been disciplined by school officials in the past — was to blame when she was informed that he had been suspended again.
“I wasn’t trying to hear it,” she said. “I was like, ‘No, they already told me what happened — you walked out of class.’ And he was like ‘Okay, forget it.’ But I can tell — you know, you know your kids — I could tell he was upset.”
Cortes told KCEN that when she found out what prompted her son to walk out of class, she was proud of him but frustrated by the school’s response.
“Especially with it being an alternative school I feel like the kids hear enough of ‘they’re bad’ or their behavior,” she added. “For them to not be rewarded for really something that is brave, you know, he is a hero to me.”
“He may not follow instructions all the time, but he does have a great heart,” she said, noting that she was now considering home-schooling him.
John Craft, superintendent of the Killeen Independent School District, said in a statement that he could not discuss the suspension.
“The District is unable to provide details related to the matter as it pertains to information involving student discipline and/or health records,” the statement said. “In an effort to protect students’ rights to confidentiality granted under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the details of the investigation and/or disciplinary actions may not be provided by the district at this time. The Killeen ISD maintains the safety of our students, staff and campuses as a priority and applauds the efforts of students who act in good faith to assist others in times of need.”
Ruelas told KCEN that he’s more concerned about his classmate’s health than his suspension. Asked whether he would make the same decision again if he was given the chance, he sounded confident.
“Most definitely,” he said.
Time after time I have read or seen on TV reports where teachers or school administrations have fucked up in disciplining students. Even after the reports have been widely circulated by the media, the only comment that will be released by the school administration is that they cannot comment on the matter because of the “students’ rights to confidentiality.” Thus school administrations are able to take cover behind a student’s rights to privacy.
Here is the perfect example of a school administration cover-up of a teacher’s and administration fuck-up in the Killeen Independent School District. Killeen, Texas is where Fort Hood is located.
The report was broadcast by TV stations and widely circulated throughout the U.S. and even overseas. And yet the school superintendent only released a gobbledygook no comment statement.
TEXAS EIGHTH-GRADER SUSPENDED FOR RESCUING CLASSMATE DURING ASTHMA ATTACK
Anthony Ruelas was suspended from middle school for helping an asthmatic classmate get to the nurse
By Peter Holley
The Washington Post
January 25, 2016
Anthony Ruelas watched for what seemed like an eternity as his classmate wheezed and gagged in a desperate struggle to breathe.
The girl told classmates that she was having an asthma attack, but her teacher refused to let anyone leave the classroom, according to NBC affiliate KCEN. Instead, the teacher emailed the school nurse and waited for a reply, telling students to stay calm and remain in their seats.
When the girl fell out of her chair several minutes later, Ruelas decided he couldn’t take it anymore and took action.
“We ain’t got time to wait for no email from the nurse,” a teacher’s report quotes him as saying, according to Fox News Latino.
And with that, the 15-year-old Gateway Middle School student carried his stricken classmate to the nurse’s office, violating his teacher’s orders.
The teenager later texted Ruelas to let him know she was fine, according to KWTX, but that didn’t stop officials at the alternative school in the Killeen Independent School District from punishing him: Ruelas was written up by his teacher and eventually suspended for two days, according to KCEN.
“I was like what?” Ruelas told the station. “I’m suspended for this? Like, I was trying to help her.”
A teacher’s report documenting the incident appears to correspond with Ruelas’s version of what transpired:
“During 5th period another student complained that she couldn’t breathe and was having an asthma attack,” the report states. “As I waited for a response from the nurse, the student fell out of her chair to the floor. Anthony proceeded to go over and pick her up, saying ‘f— that, we ain’t got time to wait for no email from the nurse.’ He walks out of class and carries the other student to the nurse.”
Mandy Cortes, Ruelas’s mother, told KCEN that she assumed her son — who has been disciplined by school officials in the past — was to blame when she was informed that he had been suspended again.
“I wasn’t trying to hear it,” she said. “I was like, ‘No, they already told me what happened — you walked out of class.’ And he was like ‘Okay, forget it.’ But I can tell — you know, you know your kids — I could tell he was upset.”
Cortes told KCEN that when she found out what prompted her son to walk out of class, she was proud of him but frustrated by the school’s response.
“Especially with it being an alternative school I feel like the kids hear enough of ‘they’re bad’ or their behavior,” she added. “For them to not be rewarded for really something that is brave, you know, he is a hero to me.”
“He may not follow instructions all the time, but he does have a great heart,” she said, noting that she was now considering home-schooling him.
John Craft, superintendent of the Killeen Independent School District, said in a statement that he could not discuss the suspension.
“The District is unable to provide details related to the matter as it pertains to information involving student discipline and/or health records,” the statement said. “In an effort to protect students’ rights to confidentiality granted under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the details of the investigation and/or disciplinary actions may not be provided by the district at this time. The Killeen ISD maintains the safety of our students, staff and campuses as a priority and applauds the efforts of students who act in good faith to assist others in times of need.”
Ruelas told KCEN that he’s more concerned about his classmate’s health than his suspension. Asked whether he would make the same decision again if he was given the chance, he sounded confident.
“Most definitely,” he said.
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
FBI RECOMMENDS INDICTING HILLARY ON SEVEN FELONY COUNTS
The FBI investigation has concluded that Hillary Clinton be charged with two counts of lying to the FBI and five counts of violating the secrets act
WASHINGTON -- FBI Director James B. Comey announced Monday that the Bureau will recommend to the Attorney General that Hillary Clinton be indicted on seven felony counts. Director Comey said that the FBI investigation has concluded that Hillary Clinton be charged with two counts of lying to the FBI and five counts of violating the secrets act.
Comey revealed the FBI had found strong evidence that, contrary to her repeated denials, Clinton’s private email server contained top secret messages, a violation of the secrets act.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that although President Obama has instructed her that under no circumstances shall she recommend any kind of indictment against Clinton, she cannot shirk the duties of her office. Lynch plans to present the seven felony charges to a federal grand jury next week. “That way Vice President Joe Biden can still enter the presidential race with a good chance to become the Democratic Party nominee,” said Lynch.
“Moreover,” added Lynch, “I can assure you that Mrs. Clinton will be indicted on all seven counts. I know how to play a grand jury. I had plenty of experience when I was the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.”
Then my dog woke me up because she had to go out and pee.
Shit!
WASHINGTON -- FBI Director James B. Comey announced Monday that the Bureau will recommend to the Attorney General that Hillary Clinton be indicted on seven felony counts. Director Comey said that the FBI investigation has concluded that Hillary Clinton be charged with two counts of lying to the FBI and five counts of violating the secrets act.
Comey revealed the FBI had found strong evidence that, contrary to her repeated denials, Clinton’s private email server contained top secret messages, a violation of the secrets act.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that although President Obama has instructed her that under no circumstances shall she recommend any kind of indictment against Clinton, she cannot shirk the duties of her office. Lynch plans to present the seven felony charges to a federal grand jury next week. “That way Vice President Joe Biden can still enter the presidential race with a good chance to become the Democratic Party nominee,” said Lynch.
“Moreover,” added Lynch, “I can assure you that Mrs. Clinton will be indicted on all seven counts. I know how to play a grand jury. I had plenty of experience when I was the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.”
Then my dog woke me up because she had to go out and pee.
Shit!
A SOUND WELCOME TO TEXAS
All the instruments and sound equipment of the band The Black Lillies disappear in Houston
The Black Lillies, a rising Tennessee roots-rock band, was in Houston for a Sunday evening gig at the Dosey Doe music hall just north of Houston near the Woodlands. After the show, they loaded all their instruments and sound equipment into a trailer. They parked their 2011 Ford E-350 passenger van and the trailer in the parking lot of the Quality Inn near Bush Intercontinental Airport where they were staying. In the morning they found – poof, like magic – the van and trailer had disappeared.
The hotel’s surveillance video showed a black SUV pulling up next to the trailer around 2:30 a.m. and the van and trailer leaving less than two minutes later.
The band reported that the van and trailer were worth $30,000 and that it would cost them $75,000 to replace the missing instruments and sound equipment.
Howdy podners, ya’ll welcome to Texas ... Houston, Texas that is.
The Black Lillies, a rising Tennessee roots-rock band, was in Houston for a Sunday evening gig at the Dosey Doe music hall just north of Houston near the Woodlands. After the show, they loaded all their instruments and sound equipment into a trailer. They parked their 2011 Ford E-350 passenger van and the trailer in the parking lot of the Quality Inn near Bush Intercontinental Airport where they were staying. In the morning they found – poof, like magic – the van and trailer had disappeared.
The hotel’s surveillance video showed a black SUV pulling up next to the trailer around 2:30 a.m. and the van and trailer leaving less than two minutes later.
The band reported that the van and trailer were worth $30,000 and that it would cost them $75,000 to replace the missing instruments and sound equipment.
Howdy podners, ya’ll welcome to Texas ... Houston, Texas that is.
CALIFORNIA COPS FRUSTRATED WITH ‘CATCH-AND-RELEASE’ CRIME FIGHTING
By Martin Kaste
NPR
January 22, 2016
An experiment has been underway in California since November 2014, when voters approved Proposition 47: put fewer lawbreakers in jail without increasing crime. The measure converted a list of nonviolent felonies into misdemeanors, which translated into little or no jail time for crimes such as low-value theft and possession of hard drugs.
Police didn't like Prop 47 when it was on the ballot, and now many are convinced they were right to oppose it.
In Huntington Beach, a seaside city in Orange County, Officer Brad Smith says Prop 47 means more drug addicts are out, living on the street. He pulls his patrol car up behind a case in point — a silver Volvo that serves as the home of two young heroin addicts. The officer seems to have a cordial relationship with them, even though he arrested them a few weeks earlier.
"We found heroin in the car," Smith says. "We also found stolen property from three or four victims."
The couple say the stolen property was stashed in their car by an acquaintance. Still, the presence of heroin and stolen property would have been enough for felony charges — before Prop 47. Not anymore.
"We booked them to our jail, and they were released before my partner and I finished our report," Smith says.
In some California jurisdictions, police aren't even bothering with the booking. They'll issue citations, along with a court date, and let people go — something some cops derisively call "catch and release."
Sierra Meysami, one of the people living in that Volvo, freely acknowledges that she'd be behind bars if it weren't for Prop 47. But she thinks it's a change for the better.
"Jail, I think it's just such an intense consequence — it's too much for, let's say, drug addicts," she says. The 23-year-old says people have to understand how hard it is to kick heroin. "I used to cry right before I'd use, just because I felt like I had to use in order to feel normal."
In Meysami's experience, jail is no cure for addiction. The heroin is still available — it's just more expensive.
Prop 47 is meant to guide more people like Meysami into programs such as drug treatment. But prosecutors and police say it's harder to get addicts into programs without the threat of prison time.
And in the meantime, police say, more drug users are out and at liberty to steal. Huntington Beach Police Chief Robert Handy says property crimes jumped in his city in the 12 months following the passage of Prop 47: auto thefts up 21 percent; larceny from vehicles up 30 percent; garage burglaries up 33 percent.
"A lot of that we attribute to those lower-level drug offenders who are now out and trying to support their habit," Handy says.
Defenders of Prop 47 say police are cherry-picking the data. Will Matthews is manager of public affairs for Californians for Safety and Justice, the group that sponsored Prop 47. In an email to NPR, he pointed to other California cities where property crime has gone down. "Would these police chiefs you're talking to give Prop 47 credit for reducing crime in those communities?" he asks.
Statewide crime rates for California aren't available yet, and criminologists generally say they need more than a year of data to come to any solid conclusions.
Pro-reform forces also worry about police intransigence in the face of change.
"I've certainly heard perspectives that perhaps there are some in law enforcement that are still running an opposition campaign to Prop 47," says Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, the criminal justice and drug policy director of the ACLU of California.
Dooley-Sammuli wrote an analysis of the first year of implementation of Prop 47 that called on local jurisdictions to use the money saved on incarceration to fund alternatives, such as drug treatment. The report also flagged "a disappointing level of resistance from some in law enforcement."
But other supporters of reform say it's worth keeping an eye on localized crime spikes.
"I don't think it is right to just brush it off as being nothing," says Magnus Lofstrom, senior fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California. He's also waiting for broader statistics on crime rates under Prop 47, but he recalls that another prisoner release from California prisons a few years ago did push up the number of auto thefts.
"It is important to recognize that it might have an impact on crime, it might very well put some upward pressure on crime rates," Lofstrom says, adding that people need to remember that crime rates have been at historic lows.
He says it's also up to local jurisdictions to adapt to the new reality. "The key ... is to think what are then the alternative strategies, crime-preventive strategies."
Huntington Beach Police Chief Robert Handy says that's what he's trying to do.
"For us as police officers, the old way of handling that was just putting them in jail. But we can't do that anymore, so we're looking for alternative ways to get them off the street, get them the treatment they need," he says. One example of this is a full-time officer dedicated to working with the city's growing homeless population.
Still, Handy doubts the public will be happy if it turns out the price of incarceration reform is more petty crime.
"The whole 'broken windows' theory of policing has been getting a lot of criticism," Handy says. "But we evolved to that because that's what society wanted. They didn't want to deal with all those crimes anymore."
NPR
January 22, 2016
An experiment has been underway in California since November 2014, when voters approved Proposition 47: put fewer lawbreakers in jail without increasing crime. The measure converted a list of nonviolent felonies into misdemeanors, which translated into little or no jail time for crimes such as low-value theft and possession of hard drugs.
Police didn't like Prop 47 when it was on the ballot, and now many are convinced they were right to oppose it.
In Huntington Beach, a seaside city in Orange County, Officer Brad Smith says Prop 47 means more drug addicts are out, living on the street. He pulls his patrol car up behind a case in point — a silver Volvo that serves as the home of two young heroin addicts. The officer seems to have a cordial relationship with them, even though he arrested them a few weeks earlier.
"We found heroin in the car," Smith says. "We also found stolen property from three or four victims."
The couple say the stolen property was stashed in their car by an acquaintance. Still, the presence of heroin and stolen property would have been enough for felony charges — before Prop 47. Not anymore.
"We booked them to our jail, and they were released before my partner and I finished our report," Smith says.
In some California jurisdictions, police aren't even bothering with the booking. They'll issue citations, along with a court date, and let people go — something some cops derisively call "catch and release."
Sierra Meysami, one of the people living in that Volvo, freely acknowledges that she'd be behind bars if it weren't for Prop 47. But she thinks it's a change for the better.
"Jail, I think it's just such an intense consequence — it's too much for, let's say, drug addicts," she says. The 23-year-old says people have to understand how hard it is to kick heroin. "I used to cry right before I'd use, just because I felt like I had to use in order to feel normal."
In Meysami's experience, jail is no cure for addiction. The heroin is still available — it's just more expensive.
Prop 47 is meant to guide more people like Meysami into programs such as drug treatment. But prosecutors and police say it's harder to get addicts into programs without the threat of prison time.
And in the meantime, police say, more drug users are out and at liberty to steal. Huntington Beach Police Chief Robert Handy says property crimes jumped in his city in the 12 months following the passage of Prop 47: auto thefts up 21 percent; larceny from vehicles up 30 percent; garage burglaries up 33 percent.
"A lot of that we attribute to those lower-level drug offenders who are now out and trying to support their habit," Handy says.
Defenders of Prop 47 say police are cherry-picking the data. Will Matthews is manager of public affairs for Californians for Safety and Justice, the group that sponsored Prop 47. In an email to NPR, he pointed to other California cities where property crime has gone down. "Would these police chiefs you're talking to give Prop 47 credit for reducing crime in those communities?" he asks.
Statewide crime rates for California aren't available yet, and criminologists generally say they need more than a year of data to come to any solid conclusions.
Pro-reform forces also worry about police intransigence in the face of change.
"I've certainly heard perspectives that perhaps there are some in law enforcement that are still running an opposition campaign to Prop 47," says Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, the criminal justice and drug policy director of the ACLU of California.
Dooley-Sammuli wrote an analysis of the first year of implementation of Prop 47 that called on local jurisdictions to use the money saved on incarceration to fund alternatives, such as drug treatment. The report also flagged "a disappointing level of resistance from some in law enforcement."
But other supporters of reform say it's worth keeping an eye on localized crime spikes.
"I don't think it is right to just brush it off as being nothing," says Magnus Lofstrom, senior fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California. He's also waiting for broader statistics on crime rates under Prop 47, but he recalls that another prisoner release from California prisons a few years ago did push up the number of auto thefts.
"It is important to recognize that it might have an impact on crime, it might very well put some upward pressure on crime rates," Lofstrom says, adding that people need to remember that crime rates have been at historic lows.
He says it's also up to local jurisdictions to adapt to the new reality. "The key ... is to think what are then the alternative strategies, crime-preventive strategies."
Huntington Beach Police Chief Robert Handy says that's what he's trying to do.
"For us as police officers, the old way of handling that was just putting them in jail. But we can't do that anymore, so we're looking for alternative ways to get them off the street, get them the treatment they need," he says. One example of this is a full-time officer dedicated to working with the city's growing homeless population.
Still, Handy doubts the public will be happy if it turns out the price of incarceration reform is more petty crime.
"The whole 'broken windows' theory of policing has been getting a lot of criticism," Handy says. "But we evolved to that because that's what society wanted. They didn't want to deal with all those crimes anymore."
THE PERILS OF BEING TOO GOOD
By Bob Walsh
There is a very good girls’ basketball team in the Rogers Area Youth Basketball Association in Minnesota. They were just kicked out of the Northwest Suburban Basketball League because they are too good.
They are currently 3-0 and other teams are refusing to play against them. The league response, to kick them out. The team was booted just before the start of a major tournament.
The coach, Jason Hanauska, has announced that he is going to speak to the league about their action. It will be interesting to see what further action, if any, is taken.
There is a very good girls’ basketball team in the Rogers Area Youth Basketball Association in Minnesota. They were just kicked out of the Northwest Suburban Basketball League because they are too good.
They are currently 3-0 and other teams are refusing to play against them. The league response, to kick them out. The team was booted just before the start of a major tournament.
The coach, Jason Hanauska, has announced that he is going to speak to the league about their action. It will be interesting to see what further action, if any, is taken.
JERRY’S VERY EXPENSIVE TOY TRAIN
By Bob Walsh
Governor Jerry Brown’s legacy is possibly going to be the California Not-So High-Speed Rail system. I call it that as it is going much significantly slower than promised originally, it costs a WHOLE LOT more than originally estimated, and will not give nearly the service promised.
It is now 2 1/2 years behind schedule and construction has started in Fresno. The current plan is for the first link of the train to go between Armpit and South Armpit in the Central Valley. They are now seriously considering running the first link from the valley into San Jose, in hopes of getting some actual ridership early on, relatively speaking.
San Jose is sort of a perennial Johnny-come-lately in this thing. I remember distinctly when the Bay Area Rapid Transit district was formed. Santa Clara County opted out. They are now in (makes sense having BART loop the bay) but the folks in Livermore are screaming like mashed cats. They have been paying taxes to BART for over 50 years and the Livermore BART station is still an empty piece of property kind-of sort-of near the Lawrence Lab. A lot of people want to give priority to the loop closure in the South Bay, with a limited buy-in by the folks there.
This thing is never going to make money. It is never even going to break even. It is barely possible it will be worth the trouble and expense if it delivers on its promise. They have already admitted it won’t. Seems like it is likely to be another money pit, with a lot of the money diverted into various graft, corruption and home-boy goodies. People are already looking at games the HSR Authority is playing with money. There will be an attempt made next November to run up a ballot initiative to shitcan the whole project and divert the money to water storage projects. That, however, is not what Jerry wants. With the overwhelming Democrat-Socialist majority in the CA legislature Jerry will probably get what he wants.
Governor Jerry Brown’s legacy is possibly going to be the California Not-So High-Speed Rail system. I call it that as it is going much significantly slower than promised originally, it costs a WHOLE LOT more than originally estimated, and will not give nearly the service promised.
It is now 2 1/2 years behind schedule and construction has started in Fresno. The current plan is for the first link of the train to go between Armpit and South Armpit in the Central Valley. They are now seriously considering running the first link from the valley into San Jose, in hopes of getting some actual ridership early on, relatively speaking.
San Jose is sort of a perennial Johnny-come-lately in this thing. I remember distinctly when the Bay Area Rapid Transit district was formed. Santa Clara County opted out. They are now in (makes sense having BART loop the bay) but the folks in Livermore are screaming like mashed cats. They have been paying taxes to BART for over 50 years and the Livermore BART station is still an empty piece of property kind-of sort-of near the Lawrence Lab. A lot of people want to give priority to the loop closure in the South Bay, with a limited buy-in by the folks there.
This thing is never going to make money. It is never even going to break even. It is barely possible it will be worth the trouble and expense if it delivers on its promise. They have already admitted it won’t. Seems like it is likely to be another money pit, with a lot of the money diverted into various graft, corruption and home-boy goodies. People are already looking at games the HSR Authority is playing with money. There will be an attempt made next November to run up a ballot initiative to shitcan the whole project and divert the money to water storage projects. That, however, is not what Jerry wants. With the overwhelming Democrat-Socialist majority in the CA legislature Jerry will probably get what he wants.
SAN FRANCISCO POLICE FOCUS ON ONE CITY BLOCK
Police blame the high volume of thefts on Proposition 47 which the voters passed in November 2014 and which downgraded certain drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors
By Joaquin Palomino
San Francisco Chronicle
January 23, 2016
SAN FRANCISCO -- Tourists snap photos of cable cars descending Powell Street with loosely gripped cameras, shoppers tear through racks of designer clothes hanging unattended in mall shops, and office workers pour out of the BART station with their eyes glued to their smartphones.
The stretch of Market Street between Fourth and Fifth streets is one of the busiest parts of San Francisco. It also generates more crime reports than any other single block in the city. Excluding non-criminal and traffic-related incidents, nearly 1,400 police reports were filed from the 800 block of Market Street and its bordering intersections last year, according to police records, or an average of nearly four per day. (The blocks encompassing the Hall of Justice and San Francisco General Hospital were not counted, since many crimes reported at those locations actually took place elsewhere.)
The high volume of incidents doesn’t mean the 800 block of Market is particularly dangerous. More than half of the reports were for theft or larceny last year, although there were also 100 reported assaults, 80 robberies and nine reports of sexual assault. The downtown block also did not record an outsize number of arrests; 357 people were booked as of late December, or about one per day.
But responding to the calls, investigating whether a crime was committed and writing the reports still takes time — San Francisco Police Department spokesman Carlos Manfredi estimates about an hour for each incident — which pulls officers away from combatting more serious issues, especially in the Tenderloin, which is part of the same police district.
“Theft is a simple incident to handle, but I would much rather use my resources dealing with the drugs and violence; I’d much rather be dealing with Leavenworth, Turk and Taylor, Hyde Street,” said Teresa Ewins, captain of the Tenderloin Police District, which oversees the block. “But the way the law is at this point, we have to handle the calls.”
Westfield San Francisco Centre and its surrounding area alone accounted for 23 percent of all calls for service made to the Southern Police District between 2011 and 2013, forcing the police to assign two people just to the shopping center, according to past reporting by SF Weekly. In essence, officers became mall cops.
Such frequent calls for service stemming from the busy stretch of Market Street aren’t entirely surprising. The nine-story Westfield center is a dense urban mall packed with shoppers — and sometimes shoplifters. The cable car turnaround attracts tourists, and the Powell Street Muni Metro and BART Station draws commuters, creating a chaotic confluence that’s ripe for crime.
“It’s a central hub, so many people go in and out of that one block,” Manfredi said. “It creates the perfect storm of nefarious activities because it’s so congested.”
As a transit hub, Market Street presents a challenge for policing.
“The location makes it easier to commit crimes,” UC Berkeley criminologist Barry Krisberg said. “You can get there on public transit easily; you can get away pretty quickly; the large crowds permit a level of anonymity where property crimes flourish; and the victims are preoccupied, they’re shopping, they’re not worried about protecting their valuables.”
Last summer, after years of data analysis and community meetings, the 800 block of Market Street stopped being a drain on the Southern Police District. The length of Market Street running from Third Street to Van Ness was folded into the Tenderloin Police District’s jurisdiction. The decision ignited heated debates, as some worried the bustling stretch of the city — particularly the block encompassing Westfield — would pull police away from one of the city’s neediest neighborhoods.
“We knew Westfield would draw energy from the Tenderloin,” said Pratibha Tekkey, director of community organizing at the Central City SRO Collaborative, which initially opposed the boundary changes before coming to support them. “We were hoping (the new boundaries) would bring more resources in.”
Tekkey said she’s still waiting for those resources. Despite its expanded jurisdiction, the Tenderloin Police District is understaffed, much like police districts in the rest of the city. It did receive an additional 34 officers in the summer, though, bringing the total count to 103.
More than a dozen are former Southern District officers who are, and had been, specifically assigned to Mid-Market, according to the police commission.
“The staffing piece is important,” said Suzy Loftus, president of the San Francisco Police Commission, referring to the discussions on redistricting. “What we settled on was, as long as there were additional resources (in the Tenderloin) to go along with the additional calls for service, it would be fine.”
Along with the 1,400 incidents on the 800 block of Market Street last year, another 975 were reported between Fifth and Seventh streets. About a third were for larceny and theft — a crime that has become more common.
Citywide, the number of larceny and theft offenses jumped 13 percent from November 2014 to November 2015, from about 33,790 incidents to 38,145, according to Police Department Compstat data. Reports of shoplifting increased about 25 percent over the time frame, from 1,870 incidents to 2,320. On Market between Fourth and Fifth streets, the number of shoplifting reports went from 231 in 2014 to more than 400 in 2015.
The explanation for the uptick differs depending on whom you ask. Some cite the growing disparity between rich and poor in the city, or prison realignment, or the natural ebb and flow of crime. San Francisco police attribute the uptick, in part, to Proposition 47. Passed in November 2014, the bill downgraded certain drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.
Now, those caught stealing items worth less than $951 don’t have to worry as much about a stiff prison term and are often just cited and released.
Such toned-down procedures are less time-intensive for officers in the short term (they don’t have to book and arrest as many people), but they could be a drain in the long term.
“I have heard that people aren’t afraid of being prosecuted,” Ewins said. “It’s unfortunate that we have to see this type of increase, but we need to examine why it is occurring. ... People are stealing, so we need to go and we need to investigate.”
By Joaquin Palomino
San Francisco Chronicle
January 23, 2016
SAN FRANCISCO -- Tourists snap photos of cable cars descending Powell Street with loosely gripped cameras, shoppers tear through racks of designer clothes hanging unattended in mall shops, and office workers pour out of the BART station with their eyes glued to their smartphones.
The stretch of Market Street between Fourth and Fifth streets is one of the busiest parts of San Francisco. It also generates more crime reports than any other single block in the city. Excluding non-criminal and traffic-related incidents, nearly 1,400 police reports were filed from the 800 block of Market Street and its bordering intersections last year, according to police records, or an average of nearly four per day. (The blocks encompassing the Hall of Justice and San Francisco General Hospital were not counted, since many crimes reported at those locations actually took place elsewhere.)
The high volume of incidents doesn’t mean the 800 block of Market is particularly dangerous. More than half of the reports were for theft or larceny last year, although there were also 100 reported assaults, 80 robberies and nine reports of sexual assault. The downtown block also did not record an outsize number of arrests; 357 people were booked as of late December, or about one per day.
But responding to the calls, investigating whether a crime was committed and writing the reports still takes time — San Francisco Police Department spokesman Carlos Manfredi estimates about an hour for each incident — which pulls officers away from combatting more serious issues, especially in the Tenderloin, which is part of the same police district.
“Theft is a simple incident to handle, but I would much rather use my resources dealing with the drugs and violence; I’d much rather be dealing with Leavenworth, Turk and Taylor, Hyde Street,” said Teresa Ewins, captain of the Tenderloin Police District, which oversees the block. “But the way the law is at this point, we have to handle the calls.”
Westfield San Francisco Centre and its surrounding area alone accounted for 23 percent of all calls for service made to the Southern Police District between 2011 and 2013, forcing the police to assign two people just to the shopping center, according to past reporting by SF Weekly. In essence, officers became mall cops.
Such frequent calls for service stemming from the busy stretch of Market Street aren’t entirely surprising. The nine-story Westfield center is a dense urban mall packed with shoppers — and sometimes shoplifters. The cable car turnaround attracts tourists, and the Powell Street Muni Metro and BART Station draws commuters, creating a chaotic confluence that’s ripe for crime.
“It’s a central hub, so many people go in and out of that one block,” Manfredi said. “It creates the perfect storm of nefarious activities because it’s so congested.”
As a transit hub, Market Street presents a challenge for policing.
“The location makes it easier to commit crimes,” UC Berkeley criminologist Barry Krisberg said. “You can get there on public transit easily; you can get away pretty quickly; the large crowds permit a level of anonymity where property crimes flourish; and the victims are preoccupied, they’re shopping, they’re not worried about protecting their valuables.”
Last summer, after years of data analysis and community meetings, the 800 block of Market Street stopped being a drain on the Southern Police District. The length of Market Street running from Third Street to Van Ness was folded into the Tenderloin Police District’s jurisdiction. The decision ignited heated debates, as some worried the bustling stretch of the city — particularly the block encompassing Westfield — would pull police away from one of the city’s neediest neighborhoods.
“We knew Westfield would draw energy from the Tenderloin,” said Pratibha Tekkey, director of community organizing at the Central City SRO Collaborative, which initially opposed the boundary changes before coming to support them. “We were hoping (the new boundaries) would bring more resources in.”
Tekkey said she’s still waiting for those resources. Despite its expanded jurisdiction, the Tenderloin Police District is understaffed, much like police districts in the rest of the city. It did receive an additional 34 officers in the summer, though, bringing the total count to 103.
More than a dozen are former Southern District officers who are, and had been, specifically assigned to Mid-Market, according to the police commission.
“The staffing piece is important,” said Suzy Loftus, president of the San Francisco Police Commission, referring to the discussions on redistricting. “What we settled on was, as long as there were additional resources (in the Tenderloin) to go along with the additional calls for service, it would be fine.”
Along with the 1,400 incidents on the 800 block of Market Street last year, another 975 were reported between Fifth and Seventh streets. About a third were for larceny and theft — a crime that has become more common.
Citywide, the number of larceny and theft offenses jumped 13 percent from November 2014 to November 2015, from about 33,790 incidents to 38,145, according to Police Department Compstat data. Reports of shoplifting increased about 25 percent over the time frame, from 1,870 incidents to 2,320. On Market between Fourth and Fifth streets, the number of shoplifting reports went from 231 in 2014 to more than 400 in 2015.
The explanation for the uptick differs depending on whom you ask. Some cite the growing disparity between rich and poor in the city, or prison realignment, or the natural ebb and flow of crime. San Francisco police attribute the uptick, in part, to Proposition 47. Passed in November 2014, the bill downgraded certain drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.
Now, those caught stealing items worth less than $951 don’t have to worry as much about a stiff prison term and are often just cited and released.
Such toned-down procedures are less time-intensive for officers in the short term (they don’t have to book and arrest as many people), but they could be a drain in the long term.
“I have heard that people aren’t afraid of being prosecuted,” Ewins said. “It’s unfortunate that we have to see this type of increase, but we need to examine why it is occurring. ... People are stealing, so we need to go and we need to investigate.”
Monday, January 25, 2016
CONVICTED OF HAVING SEX WITH STUDENTS, TEXAS TEACHER SUES ONE OF THE STUDENTS AND HIS MOTHER
Corpus Christi ex-teacher Tanya Ramirez sues student for plastering the video of them having sex on the internet and sues his mother for calling her a child sex predator
Tanya Ramirez, 31, was enjoying her teaching career at King High School in Corpus Christi, Texas. Oh yes, in 2014 she was enjoying her job by having sex with at least two 17-year-old students. You can’t enjoy a teaching job any more than that. There was just one slight problem. She got busted for it and now she is an ex-teacher.
The reason she is now a convicted ex-teacher is because one of the students videoed them having sex and then showed it to all his friends and plastered it on the internet. The video even made it onto You Tube.
Tanya pled guilty to having an improper relationship with a student, and on January 11 she was given seven years probation, ordered to surrender her teaching license, and socked with $14,000 in fines. She does not have to register as a sex offender. In a second case, she pleaded no contest to having sex with another student. It should be noted that neither student had been in one of her classes.
But the story doesn’t end there. Tanya has sued both the student who distributed the video of them having sex and his mother for defaming her.
The lawsuit against the student charges that he “disseminated the video to numerous people and caused the video to be posted on YouTube,” and that his “extreme and outrageous conduct caused her severe emotional distress.”
Amie Pratt, one of Tanya”s attorneys, said “You can't have sex with someone and film it without their knowledge, and post it on the Internet.”
In her lawsuit against Kimberly Tademy, the ‘videographer’s’ mother, Tanya charges that Tademy made false statements to several media outlets, telling them that she had sex with students other than her son, and that Ramirez is a sexual predator of children. The suit claims that the false statements exposed Ramirez to “public hatred, contempt, ridicule, and financial injury, and impeached her honesty and integrity.”
Tanya’s attorneys are appealing her conviction because she had a right to engage in intimacy under the U.S. Constitution, that the student was legally an adult, that the student and Ramirez were consenting adults, and he was not her student.
This leads me to make a few comments.
To begin with, Tanya is a real educated idiot! She and the other educated idiot teachers that have sex with students have to know that the students are very likely to brag to their friends about those sexual escapades. Worse yet, Tanya allowed one of her sexual playmates, whether willingly or not, to video their groans, moans and gyrations.
Furthermore, I hope Tanya prevails in both of the lawsuits. It is true that her intimacies with students were serious violations of Texas laws. But that does not give the student a right to distribute the video of them having sex without her consent.
And as for Kimberly Tademy getting all huffed and puffed up about her darling little innocent 17-year-old child being taken advantage of by Tanya, I’ll bet he had sex with several young girls well before he hooked up with a stupid teacher. You could hardly call Tanya a child sex predator when the students she had sex with were 17-years-old. Tademy apparently enjoyed being in the public limelight with several media outlets and her labeling Tanya a child sex predator went beyond the pale.
Finally, the argument by her lawyers that Tanya had a right to fuck the 17-year-old students under the U.S. Constitution is a bit of a stretch. But they may have a point since the students were not in any of her classes and are considered adults under Texas criminal law.
Tanya Ramirez, 31, was enjoying her teaching career at King High School in Corpus Christi, Texas. Oh yes, in 2014 she was enjoying her job by having sex with at least two 17-year-old students. You can’t enjoy a teaching job any more than that. There was just one slight problem. She got busted for it and now she is an ex-teacher.
The reason she is now a convicted ex-teacher is because one of the students videoed them having sex and then showed it to all his friends and plastered it on the internet. The video even made it onto You Tube.
Tanya pled guilty to having an improper relationship with a student, and on January 11 she was given seven years probation, ordered to surrender her teaching license, and socked with $14,000 in fines. She does not have to register as a sex offender. In a second case, she pleaded no contest to having sex with another student. It should be noted that neither student had been in one of her classes.
But the story doesn’t end there. Tanya has sued both the student who distributed the video of them having sex and his mother for defaming her.
The lawsuit against the student charges that he “disseminated the video to numerous people and caused the video to be posted on YouTube,” and that his “extreme and outrageous conduct caused her severe emotional distress.”
Amie Pratt, one of Tanya”s attorneys, said “You can't have sex with someone and film it without their knowledge, and post it on the Internet.”
In her lawsuit against Kimberly Tademy, the ‘videographer’s’ mother, Tanya charges that Tademy made false statements to several media outlets, telling them that she had sex with students other than her son, and that Ramirez is a sexual predator of children. The suit claims that the false statements exposed Ramirez to “public hatred, contempt, ridicule, and financial injury, and impeached her honesty and integrity.”
Tanya’s attorneys are appealing her conviction because she had a right to engage in intimacy under the U.S. Constitution, that the student was legally an adult, that the student and Ramirez were consenting adults, and he was not her student.
This leads me to make a few comments.
To begin with, Tanya is a real educated idiot! She and the other educated idiot teachers that have sex with students have to know that the students are very likely to brag to their friends about those sexual escapades. Worse yet, Tanya allowed one of her sexual playmates, whether willingly or not, to video their groans, moans and gyrations.
Furthermore, I hope Tanya prevails in both of the lawsuits. It is true that her intimacies with students were serious violations of Texas laws. But that does not give the student a right to distribute the video of them having sex without her consent.
And as for Kimberly Tademy getting all huffed and puffed up about her darling little innocent 17-year-old child being taken advantage of by Tanya, I’ll bet he had sex with several young girls well before he hooked up with a stupid teacher. You could hardly call Tanya a child sex predator when the students she had sex with were 17-years-old. Tademy apparently enjoyed being in the public limelight with several media outlets and her labeling Tanya a child sex predator went beyond the pale.
Finally, the argument by her lawyers that Tanya had a right to fuck the 17-year-old students under the U.S. Constitution is a bit of a stretch. But they may have a point since the students were not in any of her classes and are considered adults under Texas criminal law.
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